Well, as to the choices in ITA, as I mentioned above, the Nissans, the Hondas, the Acuras, and others (Saturns, SE-Rs, Miatas, BMW E30s) have ALL been capable of winning top notch races for years. Most of those cars have been stable for 5 years. That many choices, and satability for over 5 years is NOT a Car of the year class, IMHO.Originally Posted by mgyip
And don't spend $20K!!! Go buy AJ Nealy's CRX. Fast fast fast that car is, and I think he's asking $12K.
Regarding the ITAC and the ECu situation.
First, when cars with ECUs became available, there was no ITAC. Carb cars have always had optional carbs allowed, and have allowed jetting/air bleed needle/accel pump changes, along with ignition timing changes.
In the begining, FI cars were not allowed any such changes. It's really unclear if the weights assigned FI cars acounted for the lack of allowable tuning. Most will tell you that weight setting at the time was a hotley debated subject, and transparency and repeatibility was non existant. So there are serious doubts as to some of the weights at the time.
In order to allow fuel injected cars the same advantages carbed cars had, CRB decided to allow the same category of mods, and did so by allowing "chips". Rumours suggested that you couldn't police the chips anyway, and the true intent of the rule will likely never be know, lost to the ages.
Regardless, smart competitors replaced chips with sister boards and so on, using the chip socket. Others complained that chips weren't available for their cars. ooops! Unintended consequence. The CRB (the ITAC hadn't been created, or was in it's infancy and had no real role) decided that it was out of control, and came up with the "in the box" solution.
Than, the ITAC came into being, and created a "process" to set weights. It did a Grear Realignment" and set/reset weights of many cars, and assumed they'd be getting the power available through the allowed ECU changes.
If you hate the new rule, hate me. I brought it to the ITAC, because the old in the box version had tons of inequities. I knew going in that:
A- under the ITAC system FI cars were getting classed with a power factor that assumed they'd be taking advantage of the 'open ECU rule' even though it was only truly open to those who had the $ and could fit their solution in their box. So many many ECu cars were racing at a weight that was set assuming they'd have the ECU power gains, but they did not.
B- that allowing these cars to acheive their full potential would be removing a disadvantage, and would result in some competitive changes. Trust me on this one, as an owner of an ITA RX-7 with no torque, and carbs, and racing at a weight set based on a suspicious commitee, (years of look the other way ported rotaries skews teh perception of whats actually possible) any gains fuel injected cars made would send me down the reults charts right quick.
But, it was the right thing to do, because the needs of the many outweigh the needs of....me!
(An interesting aside: We asked for input on the ECU rule, and we got it! Many letter writers went beyond their little world, and saw the big picture. Some said, essentially, "I don't own an ECU equipped car, so any change to their favor will hurt me, but opening the rule up is the right way to go". Those letters REALLY carried some weight)
The rule corrects a bad situation, but it isn't perfect. In the IT philosophy, we are beholden to "Genre" rules. No model specific adjustments of rules are allowed. Certain exceptions DO exist in the ITCS, but we've been working on removing those.
In the end, the new ECU rule has allowed more racers to get what the rules allowed them to do already, easier and less expensively than in the previous to the rule. The path was bumpy. Technology changes do that. But we have the old racing with the new pretty equally now, in many cases.
Bottom line, if the Golf II isn't competitive because of empirical issues, or you think the weight has been arrived at in error, feel free to wrte in and present a well crafted case as to why. If that case can be coroborated, and documented, there is a chance (no guarantees) that the car could see an adjustment.
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) but it does do some things better than the comparable Honda, Mazda or Nissan. It's just frustrating to race one of the few cars that got shot squarely in the a&& by the changes in the rules. 
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