Originally posted by Knestis:
There is a philosophical question underlying this conversation - why should cars get classified?
Not to pick on this specifid example but i fail to understand how allowing the SHO to run in IT is going to contribute to the long-term health of the category in any meaningful way.

I see your point, but, I think there is a reason to class a car if someone asks. If classing a SHO gets us another SCCA member into racing then I think it is a positive thing. Classing it won't upset the balance of IT but if it picked up a few members it'd be fantastic.

Will it pick up members? I doubt the SHO would, at least not right off the bat. But when I started this thread one of the things I mentioned was that the SCCA leaves out a lot of people who want to race (remember my story of the mechanic and his Camaro, and that of another new user that posted on this thread) so classing as many cars as possible certainly won't hurt. Does it cost us anything to class them? I don't think so, make a new line in the ITS grid in the GCR for a Ford Taurus, give an estimated weight, year range, and wait for someone to build one.

My Jensen that I am building is like that - there are no others running in IT, yet it remained on the books and atracted me. I didn't want to build an RX7, Honda, BMW, etc. because those cars didn't interest me. But, the Jensen with a Lotus powerplant that it shares with my Lotus street car does interest me. Don't believe this lead me to IT? Ask Jeff, he watched it happen. I had no interest in racing IT due to the cars I saw in IT, until I got ahold of the GCR in the back of his truck and found something I liked. Not everyone is out there to win or be competitive (obviously, I'd pick a 2nd gen RX7 or BMW for ITS) and some might do it for the fun of building, people they meet, and a car they like.

I think we should identify as many cars as possible to class so as to expand the breadth of IT since it might allow some to race who otherwise would not. Besides, having a diverse field, at least to me, is much cooler than a bunch of the same cars, which you said. Having "strange cars" is not going to cause problems, you've got a lot of more common cars classed already and they are staying, so people can choose the path less followed if they like, or they can choose to walk the line with everyone else.

Now, is that 80s Chysler K car with the manual transmission classed? Might be a good one....

Ron


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Ron
http://www.gt40s.com
Lotus Turbo Esprit
Ford Lightning
RF GT40 Replica
Jensen-Healey: IT prep progressing!

[This message has been edited by rlearp (edited November 19, 2004).]