Track car daily driver recommendations

455 Bravo Uniform

455 Bravo Uniform

Final Approach
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455 Bravo Uniform
Alrighty…well my love of racing has been rekindled, with this spring being a crew chief on a go kart team and finishing well. Plus some of these threads about road racing, some acquaintances running Camaro/Mustang events, and a daily driver that’s getting older.

What do you guys recommend for a combination daily driver and occasional open track or road course car, totally for fun? Here are my requirements:
-Reliable under normal daily driving use (250k mile capable)
-Stock parts availability (large production numbers, long multiple model-year runs, parts interchange)
-Hatch back or wagon, for all my tools, parts, etc.
-Used is fine.
-Aftermarket support is low consideration (I tend to “adjust” factory parts; aftermarket is almost never as reliable). Wear parts not included in my statement (like brakes). This might change.

Will I regret asking this question? LOL!
 
I thought about a Buick Tour X, but the parts availability (?) and low production numbers (?) are a question. Plus I have no idea if it’ll be any good to run in a track, but sure looks good standing still.

Before this track thing became a thing, I was thinking of a Subaru Crosstrek…
 
Do you like muscle cars / lead sleds, or do you like lightweight agile cars?
What kind of events - autocross, track events, a mix of both?
Do you plan to run DOT legal R compound tires all the time (even on the street), or buy another set of wheels and swap them?
 
Older BMW M3, MB C63, or for less HP but excellent handling, a Miata mx-5. You can get a caged but street legal Mx-5 Cup car that is a hoot on the track. It won’t blind you with speed down the straights but will brake, turn in, and track a corner really well and are cheap to fix WHEN you bend something. I’ve raced some SCCA spec Miata events and NASA endurance events and had a blast in the nimble little Mazda (this coming from a kart then formula car racer). The bimmer and the E63 are both fantastic handling high HP cars but will be more expensive to repair and tires are going to take a chunk of change.
 
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I drag raced “muscle cars” from around 1983 to about 2007. Thinking about turns now, so more lightweight handling cars sound like fun.

I think track events would be fun - higher speeds, passing?

I would probably put on a set of DOT track tires for driving to events on weekends.
 
455 Bravo Uniform said:
Alrighty…well my love of racing has been rekindled, with this spring being a crew chief on a go kart team and finishing well. Plus some of these threads about road racing, some acquaintances running Camaro/Mustang events, and a daily driver that’s getting older.

What do you guys recommend for a combination daily driver and occasional open track or road course car, totally for fun? Here are my requirements:
-Reliable under normal daily driving use (250k mile capable)
-Stock parts availability (large production numbers, long multiple model-year runs, parts interchange)
-Hatch back or wagon, for all my tools, parts, etc.
-Used is fine.
-Aftermarket support is low consideration (I tend to “adjust” factory parts; aftermarket is almost never as reliable). Wear parts not included in my statement (like brakes). This might change.

Will I regret asking this question? LOL!
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I’m sure I’m stating things you already know, but a lot will depend on what class you want to run in. For instance, in SCCA a regular Ford Focus will run in T4 Touring class or B Spec, but a Focus ST will bump you up to T3 Touring with higher performance cars.

You can have an absolute ball and be highly competitive in a bone stock Miata and there are Miata groups and Spec Miata races everywhere you go. For me, I giggle like a school girl thrashing a Focus, Fiesta, standard Golf (I know you said you didn’t like the GTI, but maybe a regular Golf?), a Fiat 500, or any of the other compact and subcompact hatches. Start adding lots more power than that and the car can outdrive me and I tend to bend things, which gets expensive.

The Nissan Z cars do well on open roads, but get heavy in the curves with stock suspension…same as most Ford/Chevy/Dodge modern muscle cars.

All that said, if I were looking to get back into SCCA as a weekend warrior and use my daily car (I wouldn’t, as that ends up being more expensive than a dedicated track car) I’d be looking hard at an Corolla hatch with manual.
 
455 Bravo Uniform said:
Naw, it wasn’t me that said no GTI, it was RyanB.
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Oh. Then GTI!


Or Corolla hatch. I REALLY like those cars, and almost bought a new one before the GR was even out. I’d love to get a ride in a GR. They look very promising.


For reference, the last I actually raced in SCCA was in the early 2000s and I drove an ‘84 Supra with its blistering stock 125hp and wallowing-pig-balancing-on-a-water-ballon worn out stock suspension…I sucked, but I had fun.
 
I had similar parameters, and got a GTI. A Focus ST would be similar. If you're willing to spend some money, the new GR Corolla looks nice, but if you're planning on carrying tools and parts, that's a lot of money for a car that's going to get little dings and scratches. There are lots of GTIs around, most of them have a dual clutch automatic, but if you look, you can find a six speed.

It won't be as reliable as a Civic SI, but it's not terrible either. My sister has had one for the last six years, and it's needed a few things but nothing major.

Good cars for casual track driving include the GTI, Civic SI, the Toyobaru twins (BRZ, GR 86, etc.) Fiesta ST, Focus ST, various Minis, and the later Mazda MX-5s. If you want AWD you can include the GR Corolla, Subaru WRX, Golf R, Civic Type R, but all of those are a little more hard core.

roadatlantapaddock-jpg.57199
 
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AW11 MR2. If you can find supercharged in good shape, so much the better.
A whole lotta fun, though some parts are getting a little scarce.
 
Doesn't fit the hatchback requirement but I'd vote a C5 Corvette or 350/370Z because they made tons of them, they're easily modified for track use, and have rock bottom pricing in the used market. Make decent daily drivers and have trucks/hatch areas big enough for a couple sets of golf clubs so it should be good enough for some basic tool boxes/pack outs. Good power to weight in stock form but easily pushed up if desired.

Next vote would probably be the Focus ST/RS type of hatchbacks but those can be spendy in good condition and the ST/RS-specific parts can be more scarce.
 
I’ve historically been a larger/grand touring car sort of person. My old XJSs would’ve done pretty well at Heartland Park where I now track. That said, more and more I’m coming to appreciate light weight. I’m also coming to appreciate the fax that whatever makes your car better on the track will usually make it worse on the street.

I personally despise front wheel drive and automatic transmissions, and that would have me considering a Mustang or Miata. But the various hot hatches are impossible to ignore for being fun, good handling, and practical all together. I actually really enjoy driving Minis, those would also be worth a consideration if you’d be ok with a front drive car.
 
My vote goes to the Toybaru twins. Good reliability, rear wheel drive, fun to drive, decent aftermarket. Enough so that I’m considering looking at them myself.
 
For a daily driver, and able to run a road course competitively, let's look at some old "muscle cars" and their counterparts. you specified a station wagon, or similar. A '67-70 Malibu wagon, most already have the 12bolt rearend, (tough as nails) . They had the (optional) 300hp 327, 327, 283, or 350. Depending. All had either the TH350, or the TH400. There may have been a few turboglides in the early '67. Just a little tweaking in the frontend geometry, and it will handle just fine on the track. Then there are other options such as the Plymouth Satillite, or the Olds Cutlass. Pontiac LeMans, an awesome street machine, and did well on road course. But, if you want to do more than just show up, have fun, with class, then you must get into some serious, not well supported foreign stuff like Porsche, Bugatti, or some silly stuff like Toyota Supra, (which is actually a badazz) Nissan "Z" car series, or :eek: T-Rump. Mabe an MG wagon. But some of those aren't very well supported. You can go German with the Mercedes SL line. But there aren't any wagons in that class. For a wagon, you can go to the E class, but you want a V8, which is difficult to find in a wagon in the U.S., albeit well supported. The E420 is a nice roadable car, that has plenty of "Ooommph". And gets decent gas mileage to boot. For off road the ML will surprise you at what it will do. Jeep wishes they could build a vehicle like that.
Now if you want to compete and win going away, you need to be ready to "roll your own" and spend lots of AMUs. You'll be competing with the likes of GT40 and similar ilk.
 
As a former active SCCA driver, and occasional instructor, I've been lucky enough to drive a lot of different cars. Miatas are much more fun than they deserve to be based on the numbers. Light, agile, responsive, well balanced, easy to control at the limits, and rear wheel drive. They're underpowered in the straights but dang, they handle so well especially on R tires. One of the best handling cars I've ever driven. And they're reliable and cheap, with extensive parts availability both OEM and aftermarket.

Now only if Mazda would put a Wankel engine into the Miata, either the 280 HP 13B-REW or the 240 HP 13B-MSP, I'd buy one in a heartbeat without even looking at the price.
 
Yep. I'll add that a Miata is so light that the tires & brakes last a long time and you can run DOT R tires all the time, even on the street, and get at least 5000 miles out of them (so long as they aren't Hoosiers). Then you don't need a separate set of wheels.

Cuz once you've driven on R tires you will never want to go back. :D
 
Great. You guys got me started looking into Miatas. Just looking, not thinking…
 
EdFred said:
Vette!
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SoonerAviator said:
Doesn't fit the hatchback requirement but I'd vote a C5 Corvette or 350/370Z because they made tons of them, they're easily modified for track use, and have rock bottom pricing in the used market. Make decent daily drivers and have trucks/hatch areas big enough for a couple sets of golf clubs so it should be good enough for some basic tool boxes/pack outs. Good power to weight in stock form but easily pushed up if desired.

Next vote would probably be the Focus ST/RS type of hatchbacks but those can be spendy in good condition and the ST/RS-specific parts can be more scarce.
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Unless you're going to spend a lot of time at the track I wouldn't recommend a high horsepower car like a Corvette. The faster the car is, the faster the driver has to be, if he wants to get the most out of the car. There was a C5 Corvette at Road Atlanta on Wednesday, and he was in my group. He caught me at the end of the back straight, so I let him by on the start finish straight. After that, he and I ran basically together. He'd pull away on the straight, then on the next corner exit we'd be fairly close, and we went like that for a number of laps. I don't know which engine he had, but he had at least 130 hp more than I did, and he wasn't much faster than I was.

If you're driving a car with a lot of acceleration, you're going to spend less time accelerating and more time braking than you would in a less powerful car. What I think is fun on a road course is executing a corner well. The least enjoyable track experience I ever had was in a rented Mustang GT that had no-name rear tires. I'd get to the apex, start adding throttle, and the back end would start to slide. It was more frustrating than fun. The most fun car I've driven was my Formula Ford. It weight 950 lbs empty and had 113 hp, just about 10 pounds per hp with me in it, very similar to a C5 Corvette, but with way more grip and brakes. It was wonderful to drive, half a turn lock to lock, flawless brakes, and about 1.5 lateral g's. It also demanded that the driver be up to the job, because things happened very quickly. At the time I was driving regularly and was up to the task, but would not be now. If someone really loved Corvettes and was going to be doing lots of track days, then by all means get a Corvette, but for most people who are less dedicated, I'd recommend something less powerful.

There are some practical reasons to not want that much power. Tires and brakes wear out faster on a more powerful car. I looked up the brake sizes for a C5 Corvette, the rotors are smaller than those on my VW. I'm running brake pads that are streetable and are still effective on the race track. I think that the Corvette would need racing pads that would be pretty dodgy for street use, so you'd wind up changing them between track days, and both the pads and rotors would need changing more frequently than those on a less powerful car.
 
FormerHangie said:
Unless you're going to spend a lot of time at the track I wouldn't recommend a high horsepower car like a Corvette. The faster the car is, the faster the driver has to be, if he wants to get the most out of the car. There was a C5 Corvette at Road Atlanta on Wednesday, and he was in my group. He caught me at the end of the back straight, so I let him by on the start finish straight. After that, he and I ran basically together. He'd pull away on the straight, then on the next corner exit we'd be fairly close, and we went like that for a number of laps. I don't know which engine he had, but he had at least 130 hp more than I did, and he wasn't much faster than I was.

If you're driving a car with a lot of acceleration, you're going to spend less time accelerating and more time braking than you would in a less powerful car. What I think is fun on a road course is executing a corner well. The least enjoyable track experience I ever had was in a rented Mustang GT that had no-name rear tires. I'd get to the apex, start adding throttle, and the back end would start to slide. It was more frustrating than fun. The most fun car I've driven was my Formula Ford. It weight 950 lbs empty and had 113 hp, just about 10 pounds per hp with me in it, very similar to a C5 Corvette, but with way more grip and brakes. It was wonderful to drive, half a turn lock to lock, flawless brakes, and about 1.5 lateral g's. It also demanded that the driver be up to the job, because things happened very quickly. At the time I was driving regularly and was up to the task, but would not be now. If someone really loved Corvettes and was going to be doing lots of track days, then by all means get a Corvette, but for most people who are less dedicated, I'd recommend something less powerful.

There are some practical reasons to not want that much power. Tires and brakes wear out faster on a more powerful car. I looked up the brake sizes for a C5 Corvette, the rotors are smaller than those on my VW. I'm running brake pads that are streetable and are still effective on the race track. I think that the Corvette would need racing pads that would be pretty dodgy for street use, so you'd wind up changing them between track days, and both the pads and rotors would need changing more frequently than those on a less powerful car.
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The early C5 was only about 345HP stock, so it's not necessarily "high-HP" but obviously more than the Miatas and stock hot-hatches. If you need upgraded brakes and suspension, the Z06 is a good option with HP at 385. Even the 5.0L Coyote Mustangs were at 420HP so the C5 Corvette isn't exactly burning it up in comparison to a lot of the modern stuff at the track. The C5 is dirt cheap, too, so I would feel too bad beating on it at a track.
 
I'll toss out a silly option, that if you can get it to go fast will be a sleeper for sure - a late model 3rd gen Escort wagon, 2002 or so. They aren't fast stock, but at least in the sedan version handle a lot better than you would expect them to, especially on rough terrain.
 
Albany Tom said:
I'll toss out a silly option, that if you can get it to go fast will be a sleeper for sure - a late model 3rd gen Escort wagon, 2002 or so. They aren't fast stock, but at least in the sedan version handle a lot better than you would expect them to, especially on rough terrain.
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I believe the OP said "track car" and not "street racing for pink slips". :)
 
For track day work, you are not racing, you cannot win anything, so go with reliable and fun.

And it more about the driver than the car. One of my fondest memories instructing was a 17 year old that blew up his riced Honda and had to run his Dad's got o work Honda with all season tires. I told him he could learn more in that car than his tuned car.

He did. Last session a Corvette had to point him by down the main straight. Corvette drive thought he was fast because he would push the loud pedal. But 30 MPH more exit speed beats HP down the straight. :D

Obviously I track and instruct (used to run SCCA SRF, and plan to get back to it). I have driven and ridden many cars. For fun, moderate HP takes the cake. Makes you DRIVE the car.
 
455 Bravo Uniform said:
Alrighty…well my love of racing has been rekindled, with this spring being a crew chief on a go kart team and finishing well. Plus some of these threads about road racing, some acquaintances running Camaro/Mustang events, and a daily driver that’s getting older.

What do you guys recommend for a combination daily driver and occasional open track or road course car, totally for fun? Here are my requirements:
-Reliable under normal daily driving use (250k mile capable)
-Stock parts availability (large production numbers, long multiple model-year runs, parts interchange)
-Hatch back or wagon, for all my tools, parts, etc.
-Used is fine.
-Aftermarket support is low consideration (I tend to “adjust” factory parts; aftermarket is almost never as reliable). Wear parts not included in my statement (like brakes). This might change.

Will I regret asking this question? LOL!
Click to expand...

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=amc+pacer&t=raspberrypi&iax=images&ia=images

Regret it now?
 
Had a C5 6 speed for 11 years and loved driving it, and man could that thing corner.
 
C5 Corvettes are one of the best values in performance today, and they’re more accessible to newer drivers with that - back when they were new the car mags would always run comparisons between a C5, Viper, and Mustang Cobra R. The C5 was the slowest car of the three on track, but it usually would get the fastest times in the hands of the magazine drivers, who mostly really weren’t that good. That’s not presuming your level of driver skill, just making the point that GM did a good job at making the car have good manners.

With that said, @FormerHangie is right that the faster the car is, the faster the driver must be too. The old adage “it’s more fun to drive a slow car fast than a fast car slow” is absolutely true on track, different from the street where a lot of power can be really fun.
 
One thing I’d say is if you have acquaintances running cars in events, talk to them. If Camaros and Mustang events are common, maybe that’s what you want so you’re able to have a same class car and easily get in. Plus both are good daily drivers. I’ve driven several new Mustangs and even the EcoBoost is nice.
 
You guys have some great advice, thank you! Lots to think about! A Miata wagon would be cool…
 
My only hesitation with the GR Corolla is the engine. A 300HP 1.6L Turbo 3cyl? Longevity wise, I'm skeptical.
 
RyanB said:
My only hesitation with the GR Corolla is the engine. A 300HP 1.6L Turbo 3cyl? Longevity wise, I'm skeptical.
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Hi, I know a thing or two about engines, and I’m old so I’ve seen some of these things play out.

20-30 years ago, 100 HP/L was a lot and you really only got it from a turbocharged engine. Everyone back them said the same thing, wondering how long they’d last. They turned out to not only last just fine, but they tended to get the boost turned up and would still last just fine.

Nowadays, 100 HP/L naturally aspirated is common, even low, and seeing pushing 200 HP/L on pump gas is common. Control systems are better, far more advanced. With that comes much better ability to detect and mitigate detonation. Materials have improved and we can give the engine what it needs for that moment. Oh, and oils have gotten better.

It’ll do fine. Just change the oil.
 
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