Vehicle that does it all OR race car/tow vehicle/trailer?

Isn’t the GRM answer always “more cars”?  I’m really disappointed in you guys advocating for one sensible car.  Everyone should have some sort of dedicated sporty machine, whether it’s DD capable or not is up to you but something small/funky/quirky/sporty and possibly unreliable should be in the mix.  For me that thats a Miata.  And I hesitate to get anything very expensive for the reasons pointed out.  Even if you don’t bend it there is always the risk of a mechanical making the trip home much more of a PITA.  For local autocrosses I like to drive the car.  For a big out of town thing, I prefer to trailer it.

Furious_E said:

For auto x/HPDE use, one car for sure.

As for the 86, I love my FRS and think one would make a great dual duty car, BUT...if you're planning on putting kids in the back seat, I can tell you right now that ain't gonna work if they have legs. 

Yeah if you have one kid and no need to haul anyone else in the passenger seat, it'll be fine.  If you have two kids... well it'll be really tight unless one of them can go in the front.  I take my daughter to school every day and it's fine with a car seat.  I'm convinced it's impossible to fit 4 people in that thing safely.  

I usually put the 5 year old in the rear passenger with a booster and the 10 year old up front. Anything modern has to be dramatically better at crash ratings, but can you turn off the passenger airbag?

Just my opinion, but even with a "do it all" car, it'd still be too big of a risk to me to drive it any distance to any kind of performance driving event without a trailer to get it home WHEN it inevitable breaks.

It really sucks to be an hour from home in the middle of nowhere with a broken car and no way to get yourself home, let alone the car.

With that said, how about an RX-8?  Properly maintained the rotary is not really as unreliable as people make it out to be, it's plenty fun, looks modern, surprisingly capable with only minor mods, and with the rear suicide doors, the backseats are actually usable!

Pretty easy to find a decent one for ~6k or less these days, and it'll usually outrun a brz/86 stock for stock on the track.

(Mine has only lowering springs, upgraded sways, street pads,high temp fluid, and 200tw stock size tires.  It's only a couple sec. slower than my fully prepped/gutted e46 330i) 

cbaclawski said:

Just my opinion, but even with a "do it all" car, it'd still be too big of a risk to me to drive it any distance to any kind of performance driving event without a trailer to get it home WHEN it inevitable breaks.

It really sucks to be an hour from home in the middle of nowhere with a broken car and no way to get yourself home, let alone the car.

AAA Plus is cheaper than a tow vehicle.

Would renting a truck and trailer for events be a sensible option compared to buying? Do the math and figure out if renting however many times a year is cheaper than depreciation, insurance, interest on loans (if applicable) and so on. Or, if you really must buy, would a full size van be just as useful to you as a truck, since they're likely cheaper on the used market.

I used to run 2 cars, my RX8 in the warm weather and a Focus in the winter, but went to a WRX year round because I wanted to simplify and not pay for depreciation on 2 cars when I only ever drove one at a time.

In reply to captainawesome :

Like bcp2011 said, you might be able to fit two short people on the passenger side, so with a 5 and 10 year old that might work for a few years. With where I have the drivers seat set, I don't see how I could ever fit someone behind me, with leg room being the constraint. I've never tried to fit more than one passenger in mine, although the back seat does work well for the dog. 

As for the airbag, I don't see a way to turn it off, but it defaults to off if it doesn't sense any weight in the passenger seat. The weight of a decent size hoagie is enough to trigger it (which also sets the super annoying seat belt nannie off ) but it seems to me an enterprising individual could easily trick the sensor to disable the airbag.

How In reply to captainawesome :

Racing is not about cones.  It’s wheel to wheel. Cones you might as well play video games.  

Having displayed my bigotry, if there is no risk of failure then sure buy one do it all car.  The fun would happen if the do it all car blew up or broke in a serious way.  But some people might not understand  how that’s fun.  

It’s solving problems in a creative way.  Even if it’s only calling a rental place for transportation home and arranging a tow truck to bring your car to the repair shop.  

At least you have a story out of the weekend.  Not much you can say about taking .02 of a sec off your previous best that will interest others.  

Wheel to wheel on the other hand has the potential to I test others, I hit 165 mph and then out brakes the Corvette.  Turn 7 had oil dumped on it from a blown engine and I spun off.  •••••••

I have often considered ditching all of my toy cars for one car that in theory can "do it all" - especially when one or more are inoperable at the same time - but I just can't bring myself to do it. While I don't focus on being proficient at any one hobby, I do prefer my tools to be specialized for the task at hand. And I like having back-ups.  

But just having one car that can do it all and therefor only having one car to take care of?  Yeah... I can definitely see the appeal. 

In reply to irish44j :

As someone who tow a racecar, raced a kart out of a suburban, and drove a car to an autox, racing a kart was surprisingly easier out of the Three.

The Cadillac suggestions are interesting. I'll have to look into them more as the only ones I have seen driven in anger are the CTS-v and I don't know if that's budget friendly.

I'm not giving up on my must haves list, but I am considering a couple FWD options to test drive.

Fiat Abarth 500: I was surprised to read they may have similar room seating the kiddos to the 86. Not sure about reliability though.

Fiesta ST: People seem to love them, and it's the most practical option for me.

I've gone back and forth on this. In the end, I find towing is a huge hassle ... unless I'm going 400+ miles to Mosport, Tremblant, or somewhere like that.

A trailer and comfortable tow-vehicle full of spares/tools makes perfect sense if we're talking about covering huge distances, wheel-to-wheel racing, and spending 3-4 days away from home. But for local autocrosses and HPDE-type track weekends, it's not really worth the trouble. More fun to just load up the car and hit the road.

cbaclawski said:

Just my opinion, but even with a "do it all" car, it'd still be too big of a risk to me to drive it any distance to any kind of performance driving event without a trailer to get it home WHEN it inevitable breaks.

I dunno. I used to be crazy into HPDE events (former chief instructor of a large chapter of the BMW Club). I ran 25-30 track days each summer for a good 20 years and always drove the track car to events. Most of that was in an old 318is. I was only ever left stranded once when I developed rod knock due to oil starvation. AAA got the car to a local E30 specialist about 1 hour from the track and I rode home to Boston with a buddy.

In my experience, W2W racing is a whole other world...especially if you're beating up on "vintage" cars. But HPDE is low enough of a risk that I wouldn't lose any sleep over how I'm going to get the car home.

codrus said:

AAA Plus is cheaper than a tow vehicle.

Exactly. And if you daily drive a bunch of old cars (like many GRMers do), then you probably already have a AAA Premier membership anyway. So, it's "free" LOL.

Hyundai Elantra GT Sport or the Sedan model are pretty nice for the money. Not as fast as a Focus ST per say but infinitely more liveable for a DD/Auto-x/track day car. You can get them in a 6 speed manual also which is a nice little touch and i believe they come with heated seats standard?
 

kevinatfms said:

Hyundai Elantra GT Sport or the Sedan model are pretty nice for the money. Not as fast as a Focus ST per say but infinitely more liveable for a DD/Auto-x/track day car. You can get them in a 6 speed manual also which is a nice little touch and i believe they come with heated seats standard?
 

I'd consider the Elantra for sure, we love the '14 Elantra GT auto that's currently our main reliable transportation, but have always wished it was the 6 speed. I recently put a set of Yokohama S Drives on it, and that made the wife understand why summer performance tires are the bees knees.

In reply to captainawesome :

It really depends on what is important to you.  The all-in-one approach assumes you’re going to keep everything pretty close to stock, Drive it within limits, accept a little risk to your daily transportation, and sell/trade it when the next fast thing comes along.  Or serious wear happens. 

The pure race car approach means you will hold nothing back, and modify/improve it in an attempt to make it better/faster. The tow/trailer approach gives you the freedom to do that with no risk to your daily driver.  

frenchyd said:

In reply to captainawesome :

It really depends on what is important to you.  The all-in-one approach assumes you’re going to keep everything pretty close to stock, Drive it within limits, accept a little risk to your daily transportation, and sell/trade it when the next fast thing comes along.  Or serious wear happens. 

The pure race car approach means you will hold nothing back, and modify/improve it in an attempt to make it better/faster. The tow/trailer approach gives you the freedom to do that with no risk to your daily driver.  

Agreed. Originally when I started putting the e21 together I was excited to build the car with the only restrictions being the SCCA rule book. I knew it would eventually need to be trailered to events to be worth the effort, but I can only use so many cars and have somewhat limited space to store the trailer. I figured after some HPDE experience I could do some Time Trials that would make it worth having. It doesn't help that I bought a Baja Bug for the Gambler 500. If I get a trailer and truck/van I'll have to sell the VW and potentially the e30. My wife is patient and understanding, but she does have her limits and I have no intentions of screwing up her ability to accept the carcain addiction. Unfortunately in a moment of weakness and inner reflection, I mentioned to the wife how great it would be to just have one car that could do it all. She thought it was a great idea of course. I need to crunch some numbers and see what works the best financially, because in the end I'm a cheapskate.

LanEvo said:

A trailer and comfortable tow-vehicle full of spares/tools makes perfect sense if we're talking about covering huge distances, wheel-to-wheel racing, and spending 3-4 days away from home. But for local autocrosses and HPDE-type track weekends, it's not really worth the trouble. More fun to just load up the car and hit the road.

I dunno, I find it's actually less hassle to do track days with a trailer.  Dedicated track car, enclosed trailer, everything is already loaded and ready to go.  Car lives in trailer, trailer lives in side yard, when it's time to go to the track you just hitch up and drive off.

To me, the big problem with the "one car does it all" approach (at least for track days) is that I've decided I don't really like driving close-to-stock cars on the track.  Part of it is the safety features -- I want harnesses, cage, etc.  Another part of it is that I don't like feeling that I have to hold back on driving in order to preserve the car, and there are very few close-to-stock cars that you can drive that hard without them failing in some way, usually cooling or brakes.  So you modify those parts, then you modify some other parts, and pretty soon you've got a car that needs track brakes and track tires, and now you're changing all of that stuff in the morning before you go out and again in the afternoon before you go home.  A trailer lets you do all that prep the weekend before, so you just roll it out of the trailer and go.

In reply to captainawesome :

Totally understand the desire to pair down a fleet of cars as I've realized I've hit my personal limit with three (daily/project/bigger project). It all comes down to what you really want to do with your vehicles, time and money. If you want to spend more time driving and less time wrenching then it might make sense to pair down the fleet for a newer performance car option. But in my experience, it's all too often than we get tied up in an idea or dream of what we'd like to do without a realistic plan for how to achieve that goal. I know for a fact that my projects suffer from a lack of realistic time management on my end and that can be frustrating at times.

My best advice would be to get realistic about the resources you have and the things you want to achieve. That'll probably give you the best idea of how to move forward.

codrus said:

cbaclawski said:

Just my opinion, but even with a "do it all" car, it'd still be too big of a risk to me to drive it any distance to any kind of performance driving event without a trailer to get it home WHEN it inevitable breaks.

It really sucks to be an hour from home in the middle of nowhere with a broken car and no way to get yourself home, let alone the car.

AAA Plus is cheaper than a tow vehicle.

 

This is relevant to my interests as I'll soon go from having relatively short drives to events (10~45 minutes) with help from friends and family easily available just in case anything goes wrong, plus the lower tow truck costs that come with shorter distances, to having moderate to long drives (40min~2h typical, up to as far as I dare) to events with little to no help available if anything goes wrong and potentially huge tow truck costs, and as such I've been thinking that the tow vehicle + trailer is the way to go. Previously I'd only ever considered towing as a way to save on the various paperwork costs of making a car legally streetable.

Also I don't think it's a good idea to have only one car for the same reason it's not a good idea to have only one computer or bathroom: if one breaks down, you're immediately have zero of that thing, which will make fixing the first much more difficult or at least much more stressful. With at least two vehicles, you have a backup vehicle and each one can have multiple roles: the track car can also be a fun weekend car and backup daily driver. The tow vehicle could be a primary daily driver and hauler. Less need to be a jack of all trades means less reason to refrain from specialization: Why not put fast-wearing tires and rock-hard suspension on the track car? It's not like you drive it every day.

There really isn't a vehicle that 'does it all'... the 'one car' solution almost always results in every aspect of the car's use being compromised in some way.

A tow rig can be a perfectly useable, and even quite comfortable daily, though you may pay a penalty in fuel mileage.

And having a tow rig/trailer allows the track car to be uncompromised.  Which is a good thing for a track car.  And if something bad happens on track, you're daily isn't affected.

Racing is a financial fail no matter how you look at it, so as long as you're playing within your means, it shouldn't even be a factor.  Only you can say if the expenditure is worth the enjoyment you get from it.

Having done it both ways, I much prefer having a dedicated track car that gets trailered to the track.

In reply to LanEvo :

Well, to each their own I guess.  Whether due to my own incompetence, or just age related random failures, I've been stranded twice.  Once I was in a relatively populated area and was able to get a tow truck, the other I was at a racetrack in the middle of nowhere(barely even has cell service) and would have been totally screwed had it not been day one of a 2 day event and there was a super awesome attendee heading my way with an empty trailer and trailered my car back for me(and even let me ride in the front seat of the truck).

I would have been stranded a 3rd and 4th time, (again 30 miles from nowhere) but by then I had invested in a trailer, winched it up and went home no big deal.

I may be biased based on my own bad luck, but I just don't ever want to be stuck again, especially in the backwoods far from home.

In reply to cbaclawski :

I started out Vintage racing with a street legal MGTD that I drove to and from the race track.  Then I started camping st the track and built a little trailer  for camping equipment  to pull behind the MG.  

However one race the oil cap came off and blew all the oil out. I spun a rod.  There I was hours away from home.  

Luckily Bob Bodine unloaded his Ferrari GTO  and drove it home. Putting my MG on his trailer which I drove his vehicle pulling his trailer with my MG on it.

The sound of that magnificent  unmuffled Ferrari GTO   Was a real pleasure. A MG club member used my hitch behind his TD to pull my little camping trailer.  

Everything turned right. But could have been much worse. 

From then on I used a trailer for every Vintage event.   

If you want to play,  yes you have to pay. Or take risks.  

This is the reason I’ve owned a dozen ir a few more Mustangs.  It really is the best compromise for something you can beat on amd drive daily.  Well maintained they manage to run 250k miles, are quick, handle decent, cheap to repair, but you will know the tire guy.....  

Honestly if I had to do this, I’d look for a 2011-14 GT with the performance pack brakes and recaros. 

I’m a multi car guy now though.

frenchyd said:

In reply to cbaclawski :

I started out Vintage racing with a street legal MGTD that I drove to and from the race track.  Then I started camping st the track and built a little trailer  for camping equipment  to pull behind the MG.  

However one race the oil cap came off and blew all the oil out. I spun a rod.  There I was hours away from home.  

Luckily Bob Bodine unloaded his Ferrari GTO  and drove it home. Putting my MG on his trailer which I drove his vehicle pulling his trailer with my MG on it.

The sound of that magnificent  unmuffled Ferrari GTO   Was a real pleasure. A MG club member used my hitch behind his TD to pull my little camping trailer.  

Everything turned right. But could have been much worse. 

From then on I used a trailer for every Vintage event.   

If you want to play,  yes you have to pay. Or take risks.  

Great story!!