Originally Posted by
JeffYoung
Let me ask some of the guys with more "historical" SCCA experience than me a few questions.
When I do some SCCA history "research" on the web, I see something interesting. I see Production being an incredibly healthy class in the 60s and 70s, open to both amateur guys and "semi pro" teams like BRE, Sharp, Group 44, etc.
What's interesting to me is that production has been in a slow decline, in my view, since the mid 80s and is now a mere shadow of its former self.
My question, and I ask this solely to figure out how we best have IT avoid this fate, is of course why?
a. Was it money/factory teams? I would argue that for all the good they did, the hyper developed 325s of B-World (great guys) and RX7s of Speedsource (same) ended up hurting IT more in the 2000 to 2004 time frame than we thought. To me, ITS is just now recovering with cars just as fast, but done via amateur programs.
My fear is Nationalsocializing (whoops!) IT would bring some of that back.
b. Was it rule madness? Again, with more "at stake," there would be more bickering over the rules, and more rule madness with IT.
c. Other thoughts?
While it is impossible to do, I'd really like to "freeze" ITS in the SEDiv as it stands now. Great car counts. Lots of makes. Some high dollar efforts up front; some amateur efforts up front. Great racing. Maybe identifying what went wrong with Prod will help in avoiding its fate.