So, we are looking for a runoff car for our club.

We keep a car for doing our end of season runoff at FCSCC autocross here in CT. Anyone that is a class winner does this runoff and we also have a separate rookie runoff for the top rookies.

Anyway, we have had various cars over the years that did not really work out all that well.

We really could use a Miata at this point, but at the same time ABS would be really nice because when you have multiple people driving a car hard that have never driven it before and no ABS you get a lot of tire flat spotting. Yes, there are Miatas with ABS, but in the NA/NB land they are somewhat rare and NC with LSD is getting a little out of our price range.

Anyway, we could do something other than a Miata, but I don't see a lot of other good options that might fit our criteria. Realistically the qualifications are the following...

• RWD
• ABS
• Cheap to upkeep
• Can be aligned for good tire wear during autox runs (or inexpensively modified to allow this)
• LSD rear
• Doesn't break when multiple people hot lap it
• Isn't a basket case that needs a bunch of work done to it right off the bat and no salvage cars to avoid hidden surprises.
• Street driveable
• $7k or less

Also, no hypothetical cars please, only actual cars, ie ads. I realize there are a lot of cars that MIGHT fall into this price range.

I realize people might have questions about why we have these qualifications.

• RWD - Because it's better.
• ABS - Tire flat spotting as noted
• Cheap to upkeep - We're not the Ferrari club.
• Alignment - Tire wear again.
• LSD rear - Tire wear again.
• Doesn't break - Runoffs don't go well if the car breaks
• No basket cases - We want it to just work for the most part, this isn't the 2XXX challenge
• Street driveable - No one is gonna want to trailer it.

An NA or NB Miata with a Torsen rear and ABS would probably be the car for us.

So hypothetically, if some guy in Connecticut had a fully maintained, low mileage, rust free NA Miata with ABS, a Torsen and some extra sets of wheels and race tires, it might be something that you guys could potentially be interested in?

You know...hypothetically.

Woody wrote: So hypothetically, if some guy in Connecticut had a fully maintained, low mileage, rust free NA Miata with ABS, a Torsen and some extra sets of wheels and race tires, it might be something that you guys could potentially be interested in? You know...hypothetically.

Hypothetically, that would be an ideal car for our situation. One of our guys has a lift he can garage it on as well as he used to have a Miata race car that he stored and sold recently. The car would see heavy use for runoffs, but otherwise would be lightly used.

Hypothetically, you might have mail.

And if it does break half the people at the event know how to fix it and 1/4 of them might have the spare part on their car right then. So there's that too.

We used a (my) non abs Miata for our runoff in Philly region and the tires are still round, but yeah, ABS would be a real big help. We also do just the top 5 in PAX for the season so they tend to be folks who are used to driving other cars, not johnny newbie who was 1 of 1 in HS and hasn't driven a non-ABS car in his life.

And if it does break half the people at the event know how to fix it and 1/4 of them might have the spare part on their car right then. So there's that too.

Yes, this is definitely a factor from my POV, but a 1.8 with the Torsen is pretty tough overall.

Whats a "runoff" car?

In reply to plance1:

a control car that is the same for all drivers to see who is the better driver.

Had a good time meeting Woody and he did indeed have the car we were looking for and lives about 30 minutes away from me. I'll be helping another member pick it up this week!

GRandoM success!

one of the regions near me just gets a rental for the day for the class leaders. Pretty much whatever looks like fun on the lot that day with insurance. Be a lot cheaper than keeping an extra car just for a runoff day.

RevRico wrote: one of the regions near me just gets a rental for the day for the class leaders. Pretty much whatever looks like fun on the lot that day with insurance. Be a lot cheaper than keeping an extra car just for a runoff day.

How do they make sure the car is able to be consistent across the drivers? All season tires don't really hold up all that well to hot laps autocrossing.

We either opt to run one after the other, or give it a 5 minute cool down. 2 runs per person.

Looking at the times, aside from me, it was pretty close across everyone. Being a car no one had driven or knew anything about was enough to level the playing field. time sheet

RevRico wrote: We either opt to run one after the other, or give it a 5 minute cool down. 2 runs per person. Looking at the times, aside from me, it was pretty close across everyone. Being a car no one had driven or knew anything about was enough to level the playing field. time sheet

How many people do you allow in the runoff? We let all class winners in. If we gave five minutes a person cool down we would be there for two days and if we run one after another we would cook the tires. We've cooked tires that are designed not to be cooked.

We only have 6 or 7 classes that qualify. Yea, that could be an issue in a bigger region. Heck, the only reason 3 of us, myself included, qualify is because we're in a class of one.

I forget not everyone has turnouts that average 25 people.

Will Keith get to commute in this runoff car too?

What about an E36 328is? It fits the requirements and you could find a really nice one for under that $7k price cap.

crxmike wrote: Will Keith get to commute in this runoff car too?

Someone else will be taking the car in as Keith wants nothing to do with a Miata.

G_Body_Man wrote: What about an E36 328is? It fits the requirements and you could find a really nice one for under that $7k price cap.

Well, we already bought the Miata from Woody at this point, but we did consider E36 cars and E46 cars. E36 328is doesn't have a limited slip. Some of the 325is cars have one, but you're now going back to 1995 and even though it's around the same year as the Miata we bought there is just a real difference in how the E36 cars hold up and are used vs a Miata of the same vintage. With the BMW you've got issues like the cooling system usually needs a refresh, the subframe can tear apart and there is no camber adjustment up front among other things.

The Miata we got from Woody is in really good shape overall with low miles and mechanically it's ready to go for the stuff we want to do. It really needs almost nothing other than some alignment tweaks. Granted he found a decent car and then also did a bunch of detail work on it to make it ready for possible track days.

The Miata aftermarket is incredibly cheap whereas the BMW market is less so.

Finding an E36 325is that has been cared for like that would be tough I think. Most E36 cars seem to be beaten to hell and back except some M3s and then those command more money.

I really didn't want to get an NA Miata. I had an NA Miata for almost ten years so I'm kinda sick of them and I never drove mine on street tires or without forced induction so I'm terrible at autocross with a regular one so there is no competitive advantage there either. I'd much rather have something new to me like a 350z or Mustang GT or RX8 (though I had one of those, but never competed in it), but the Miata just really fits what we need to do.

Saskatoon Sports Car Club has a Chevette with an automatic. At the annual big deal invitational, we run the Chevette Challenge, and up to 20 people will run it through the course of the afternoon. Its hilarious, and its also really cool how a dude thats always fast in a high horsepower, well prepped car is still fast, even in a Chevette.

My trick is to plant the throttle and keep it there, and use the brakes to scrub speed. It takes a long time to get the secondary open again, plus it overheats the brakes for the next guy.

Its hilarious, and its also really cool how a dude thats always fast in a high horsepower, well prepped car is still fast, even in a Chevette.

This is why I and a bunch of other club members weren't concerned with what the car was so much as whether it could just be dealt with easily. People that are fast drivers are usually fast in everything.

If you end up looking at something that ticks all of the boxes except ABS, it might be worth looking into either a master cylinder swap, de-powering the brakes, etc. to increase pedal effort required. If you get the pedal effort high enough that most people would be really putting their weight into it before locking the tires (in a straight line, at least), that should greatly reduce the accidental tire lockup incidents.

And a thought on the tire issue: other than needing a couple runs to warm up, might this be a good time to run something like an R7 instead of an A7, being that the repeated back-to-back runs would be more like track use than normal autocross in terms of getting the tires hot?