Quote Originally Posted by Chip42 View Post
well, if it's done well, the added weight just equalizes and does not sink the car. if "the cream rises to the top" is your thinking, then yeah - you WILL have a very limitte dnumber of entries that are viable. you know why? because most car companies exist to make money, and they do that by making platforms they can sell cheaply (or relatively so) to everymen that fit 4 fat people, a dog, and a shitload of luggage or groceries and get good economy and tolerable ride and handling. on occasion they take a page from the muscle car era and drop in a motor and some dampers that make us touring car wierdos all excited, but it's still a massively compromised chassis. then every now and then you get an MRS, a Miata, an FRS, or a Civic Si. short lists mean small numbers and the attraction to this type of racing is diversity. if a VW doens't stand a chance (and be honest, it doesn't - outside of a VW motor in a Porsche) then why would anyone build one? what, then, is VW's incentive to help out the club, the club racers, the class, the market of good touring cars, etc...?
Oh I understand what you're saying.... but what I don't understand then, is why market the STx classes as weight/displacement in the first place? When the classes were first proposed, the idea seemed to be that the powers-that-be were making an effort to equalize the motors, by weight, restrictors, valves/cylinder, etc.... But that there was no guarantee of competitiveness for your combination of chassis/motor. Meaning specific cars would not be singled out due to their strengths and/or shortcomings.

And that seemed to be what attracted a lot of people in the first place. Basically, that there was a published formula for establishing the weight/etc of a given chassis/motor package. And that, as a competitor, you knew exactly what that formula was prior to building your car. Everybody gets the same playbook and you get to choose which knife you want to come to the fight with.