track day toys

My dad is getting semi obsessed with lightweight track day toys. Every month brings another add in the magazine that catches his eye. What are some of these on the affordable end of the spectrum? I'd like to see what all is out there for under $40k or so.

So far I've come up with

Exocet/westfield/catfish - all the miata based derivatives, are there others?

locost

caterham

what older formula cars might fall in this price range?

And finally, is there ever a time when a lot of these cars are gathered somewhere for marketing? where you could sit in them back to back, and maybe get a driven around in them? We are thinking this would be a cool weekend trip if such an event exists.

I think the closest you'll see to that event is going to be the Mitty. Although all the Miata derivatives will be at Laguna Seca on October 3-4, and of course they all live in our shop.

I'm trying to convince him to swing by your shop on an upcoming trip.

Keith Tanner wrote: I think the closest you'll see to that event is going to be the Mitty. Although all the Miata derivatives will be at Laguna Seca on October 3-4, and of course they all live in our shop.

And Miata-powered locosts and Caterhams have been known to show up at the Summer Camp/Open House too.

From what I've seen, that budget buys him anything from a Formula Vee to possibly a Formula Atlantic with Formula Mazda, Formula Ford and all of those in between, usually with some money to spare.

There's a nice Formula Renault advertised for sale here in town for $13.5k, for example.

Old Formula cars outside the big boys' classes are surprisingly affordable until something breaks.

Just make sure it's from an established class. A friend bought some weird little formula car to learn to race in, and found that he basically was in a class of one all the time. Sold it due to boredom.

Shouldn't be a problem with a FF.

Can/has your dad driven anything trackworthy? I could suggest a million things but they would all be predicated on his experience. A $17k SRF might make him E36 M3 his pants. A 3k lbs tin top with 250 wHP might actually be too much car. An L7 turbo Exocet might not be enough power. Where is he on the "I can drive this thing" scale?

He's got a s2000 currently. Yes anything mentioned so far will be a big big step up

Research maintenance costs on any formula car. As in, replace all ball joints annually, at $1,000. Formula cars are much more maintenance-intensive than a door-slammer race car.

Having said that, I think that formula cars will win the dollar per horsepower/pound ratio contest.

What are your dad's plans for the S2000, these are now P1/P2 cars. By simply going to a moderately built 2.3 Ford the car would be significantly faster or simply installing a big valve ported head on the 2.0 would work as well.

I've recently driven a stock 1.8 powered Exocet and the only thing it lacked was top end. It would hit the Aero wall at about 104 mph, an extra 20-30 horsepower would help a lot. 180 hp would likely make it go well.

 Tom

The problem with an old formula car is that it's really not a track day toy, because most track days won't let open wheel and closed wheel cars run at the same time for safety reasons. That pretty much reduces you to running at open test days or actual race weekends, which is inconvenient and expensive if all you're looking for is cheap track fun.

Did you mean he has a Honda S2000, or Sports 2000 race car? Seems a Sports2000 would already fit the bill he is seeking.

Besides driver skill, the other side is how much of it do you want to build vs. buy. And whether it needs to be street legal or driveable.

The other lightweight track car I've had my eyes on is the Sylva/Fisher Fury. There is an ad monthly in the back of GRM for a US importer, but the website at http://www.furyusa.com/index.html has always looked a bit suspect and out of date. IMO the spyder version looks fantastic:

Honda s2000

In reply to MattGent:

I love the looks of the Fury. I've never seen one in person, but I understand Chet sets up a booth at Carlisle for the kit car meet. If I ever find myself with too much money and not enough toys, I'd be very interested in one.

icaneat50eggs wrote: Honda s2000

+1