One of the reasons I bought this up was a 22 year old kid I met. I had my subframe in the suspension shop (read tire/brake/strut shop) to get bushings pressed out that I could not (see Ricky, there IS something a C-clamp won't do! ;-)).

This kid was intriqued with what I was attempting to do and he knew I had some other neat cars I had bought in for tires before. He wanted to know how he might be involved, see, he had always been a motorhead and was getting tired of the 1/4 drags. Handy with tools, could do his own work, and wanted to road race.

I brought him Jeff's rules book and let him look through it for a few days explaining IT (what I knew of it) to him as being a good place to start (sorry, he was dead set against driving through cones in a parking lot) that would not cost him a fortune.

I came back later and talked to him some more when I picked up my subframe. He has two Camaros, 1985s, and wanted to use them as a foundation for IT. Both are 305 5 speeds. Whoa right there.

He could use the car is AS, as far as I know, but the level of prep goes through the roof for what a young guy can afford. Can't use it in IT, for some reason, even though it was rated at 180hp, weighs a ton, and has a simplistic rear suspenion. So, he was rather disappointed and knew enough to take a look as NASA (which I know nothing about). His other buddy in the shop, who was also interested, had a WRX but of course lost interest when I told him that was a no-go either.

The point is, by excluding cars or not having places to race them cheaply is keeping people out of the sport. I had always wanted to race something, but, with the SCCA being the SCCA it is not exactly "user friendly" for a new person unless you find some helpful people. I've found a lot of helpful folks here and of course locally with Jeff, Robert, Mark, and Rick who give me advice and hook me up with contacts.

There are a lot of "sports car nuts" out there with aging cars that would like to use them somewhere - the SCCA could offer them that place to use them and I think IT would be even larger than it is. Of course, it could be that the SCCA doesn't want IT to get larger than it is seeing as how I just recently learned I can't even read race results in their magazine.

Open some more classes for more cars - it can only make the sport appeal to more people and allow it to grow for a whole new audience. I almost laughed when I read how the SCCA was trying to appeal to the "import crowd" with the recent article in Sportscar indicating they'd always been their for import fans. Maybe so, maybe it is true since I was only 5 in the early 70s, but they are missing them now for sure and could use them to keep the sport from being a place of old men in white racing suits. Of which I saw an alarming amount of at recent races and not so many young men at all....

RANT OFF.

Ron

PS-Rick, that Z3 should be plently cool in race trim and ought to be dang fast. Ought to be in IT as well, somewhere.

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Ron
http://www.gt40s.com
Lotus Turbo Esprit
Ford Lightning
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Jensen-Healey: IT prep progressing!

[This message has been edited by rlearp (edited November 02, 2004).]

[This message has been edited by rlearp (edited November 02, 2004).]