I've only been racing in the SCCA for six years, but here is my opinion, for what it's worth. For the SCCA to survive and grow, we need to attract new competitors. I don't have any facts and figures to back this up, but I would venture to say that most new competitiors that get into SCCA racing for the first time are doing so in IT. Therefore, anything that has the potential of making IT more expensive has the potential of having a detrimental effect on future membership and club viability. I can see letting IT cars run with the Prod cars as opening the door to that possibility.

Firstly, it will probably reduce the car counts in the regional IT races, thereby reducing the car counts for regional events, consequently raising the entry fees for regional events to keep them from losing money. Not a good scenario for attracting new members, or for keeping existing members operating on low budgets.

Secondly, as soon as IT cars are allowed to run with the Prod cars, the bitchin' and moanin' will start about how they (IT) are not competitive, and then one of two things will happen. Either the IT guys will stop entering the Prod races and go back to their regional ones, meaning we are back where we started, or the IT rules will start to be rewritten to make the cars more competitive with Prod, meaning more expense, and possibly 2 levels of IT in SCCA, regional and more expensive national.

On the other hand, if the national/regional class structure was dumped, making all classes eligible to make the Runoffs based on average car counts, IT could continue running as it does now, keeping the same rule set, with no temptation to modify the rules to keep up with some other class, and it would be up to the competitor whether he was willing to spend the dollars necessary to tow to all the tracks and enter the number of races it would take to get a shot a going to the Runoffs. To acquire/prep an IT car would not cost any more than it does now, just the added expense of competing at the "national" level. IT would still be available as the least costly starting point for new members wanting to get into low-budget racing.

OK, I'm done for now. Flame away at will.