What does "grassroots" mean any more?

I'm old enough to remember when the automotive term "grassroots" meant getting out on-track for little money, and that typically included the cost of the car. Now there seems to be a fair bit of attention given toward what new cars are good for the track. Seeing a NISMO Z listing at $91K makes me wonder why it's being given any attention at all - other than "get a load of this." Okay, it's admittedly an over-priced outlier, but it begs the question: What money level these days constitutes "grassroots?"

I guess I'm getting old enough to be that old grumpy guy who complains about how expensive everything is, so I'm just doing my part.

I think that dude selling the red Civic Si for $7,500 is in that arena.  Buy some lower springs, shocks, sticky tires and maybe some sway bars?  Header? Exhaust?  

Can you get a fun runner put together for $10k? Autocross?

The same 80's Rabbits or Civics bought cheaper for $2,500?

I was sitting with a few friends recently and made the statement "I could get into a track day car for $5K", and it started a pretty good discussion about how I was off by a factor of 3 or 4 times. Some of it's because they want that cool NISMO, rather than the beater , but running MINI I was suggesting. That, and they tended to want to go to Tire Rack and order nice new wheels and tires for $2K, a credit card build. The thought of trying to do it like building a Challenge car just didn't sit well with any of them. Wait 'til I tell them about this.....My Challenge spending habits

I think it's less about money and more about the process. It could be with a crap can lemons car or a $90k Nissan. It's getting out there and doing. 

I bought the Foxbody Mustang for $7500 and spent $700 on 200TW tires I was 3rd of 6th cars in our fist autocross with it. The clutch was slipping and the front springs were all wrong.  I will be at 10K with it when I get the brakes and chassis stiffeners done.

Right now there is a Sport Renault (Spec Racer) for sale for $9900. I could win overall in my race group with it.

I will be into the Datsun for $9500 when the new motor is done. it will be running in the 5th-7th overall and snag ther occasional class win.

If I turbocharged the Datsun I could win my class locally at SCCA Time Trials; for the moment I want to keep it vintage legal.

There are lots of great deals out there..................you don't need to spend huge amounts of money to have fun or even be competitive but a lot of people think they to run high dollar cars.

In reply to DeadSkunk (Warren) :

Show them what I am spending..........people are always blown away by how little I spend on cars.

Toyman! said:

I think it's less about money and more about the process. It could be with a crap can lemons car or a $90k Nissan. It's getting out there and doing. 

 

Yup.

I ran my ’84 Rabbit GTI at one of my first track days–this was back in 1995 or so–and started chatting with a gentleman who was there with a Ferrari. He had deeper pockets but a similar approach of making that budget go as far as it could. 

There are two schools of thought on this and you're only considering one: The one where grassroots means there's a budget, and that there may be some collectively acceptable threshold to this budget.

The other is that there is no budget and grassroots means any self-funded amateur racing. Under this definition, buying a Ferrari 250 GTO and entering it into a private time attack at Thermal Club would be grassroots racing.

The first one seems way more relevant and interesting to me, that's for sure, and I agree that costs are getting out of hand. After smashing my Toyobaru and having to repair it I feel like such a relatively cheap car is already pushing the limits of affordability, even by expensive hobby standards.

I think 'grassroots' basically just means doing it with/for less. Less money and/or less resources. That can, but doesn't always, mean cheap. It's not easy to pinpoint because it's relative.

Getting out on track in something cheap and slow, but on track nonetheless, is grassroots. Giving cars 2x+ the cost of yours a run for their money, regardless of what that cost might be, is grassroots. Privately built cars going up against professionally built cars is grassroots. Built in general is grassroots, but well bought can certainly be grassroots too. Passing Randy Pobst, regardless of how slow of a car he's in and how fast of a car you're in, is grassroots.

While 'self-funded amateur' may frequently coincide with this, I see that more as correlation than causation.

A $91k NISMO Z might not be very grassroots now, but it won't always be worth $91k, and what is applicable now is that it can highlight the difference that money might or might not make... And it provides people a cost/performance benchmark for their own grassroots aspirations. There is also the Cayenne effect, where it also helps attract the sales that enables continued production for the smaller niche enthusiasts.

Toyman! said:

I think it's less about money and more about the process. It could be with a crap can lemons car or a $90k Nissan. It's getting out there and doing. 

 

It's also the base location where you are running.  Like autocross and track days to introduce you to either national autocross or regional w2w racing.  Even local drag nights would be grassroots- even if it's only covered in GRM for the Challenge.

You can autocross/track both cheap and expensive cars.  But it's the backbone of pretty much all kinds of racing out there.

(as a side note- my one "rant" about the challenge is that when cars do show up as legal for X class, they don't get much coverage for it.  I had in the back of my mind to find the best class for a Challenge kind of build- but at the same time, I had no contacts who could take the car to nationals to see if it was quick or not)

There's also a portion of "Grassroots" that uses tools that are generally available for everyone in the best way possible.  Like aero or data acq or driver aids.  

To me, grassroots means enthusiast-driven and amateur. It doesn't necessarily mean a low budget on an absolute level, but it's probably low on a relative level. A grassroots run at Le Mans, for example, would not be a cheap date - but it wouldn't have to be Toyota money either. Heck, when Bill Caswell took a $500 BMW to the Mexico WRC event, it cost him over $20k in today's dollars. But that was 100% a grassroots effort.

It might be a little difficult to separate grassroots from privateer in a lot of cases, at least in my mind.

The cars that GRM gets to test are always new, of course. And they're amazingly erratic :) They're a relatively small media outlet on the wrong side of the country, so I think it's not so much a selection process on their part as "we'll take what we can get".

I think the original non-Motorsports usage meant "at the lowest level of the system", ie the individual. So by extending this idea to car stuff, if it's DIY, it's grassroots. Or something like that.

This is a question/line of thought that started appearing some time ago in vintage racing:  "what does 'vintage' mean?"

From this muck up at Road America about 20 years ago, the topics of cheater engines and advanced chassis/suspension modifications came to light thanks to some in this group pictured below...prior to that, it had been a bit of an "open secret."

Coniglio Rampante said:

This is a question/line of thought that started appearing some time ago in vintage racing:  "what does 'vintage' mean?"

From this muck up at Road America about 20 years ago, the topics of cheater engines and advanced chassis/suspension modifications came to light thanks to some in this group pictured below...prior to that, it had been a bit of an "open secret."

More details ? I'd like to read up about what happened.

Road America, 2005, I believe. 

In reply to Cousin_Eddie (Forum Supporter) :

FWIW  The term grass-roots has always been "At the lowest level" to me.  Drag Racing, Auto Cross, Road Racing, Dirt / Asphalt Circle track.

The basics from where to GO UPWARDS

YRMV

Grassroots is relative. If you bring a $100,000/yr effort to  category where the top runners are spending five or ten times that,  you're grassroots. But also, some GRM guys have been around long enough that they've climbed the economic ladder, yet still have a grassroots mentality and friend base that comes with it. 

Also, with the demise of so many automotive magazines, increasingly, GRM is the last, best choice on the block. 

In reply to David S. Wallens :

Thank you. I found plenty to read on it.

this one has in-car footage from many cars:

In reply to Cousin_Eddie (Forum Supporter) :

Sorry; had to post and run.  Thanks to others providing the info.  
 

I can say "I was there that day" but something that is also true is that I was sitting on the backside of the track ... waiting, waiting, waiting ... for the cars to come around to the Hurry Downs/Carousel section, chompin' on a brat.  Then finally being able to make out on the crackling PA system that there was a problem at the start/finish line as the green flag was being waived.

But yeah, for internet braggin' rights, "I was THERE!!" 

To me grassroots is both; low or lowish budget and amateur status events.

Grassroots is doing more with less than professional support. It's not your full professional effort but you are doing the best you can with what you can afford to devote to the effort.  Go read the BRZ rally thread for the complete embodiment of this, no offense to the many other epic build threads on here but most recent one I scrolled back to.

I remembered that road America crash when it happened and the investigation/fall out sounded like a bunch of coked up boomers had a racing habit. 

In reply to Coniglio Rampante :

Now that I've vintage races for 14 years my experience is that the pendulum tends to swing from one side to the other.

There was one run group with the club that I race with that was getting ever more aggressive. Then a couple of years ago there was a nasty pile up where two drivers were seriously injured.

People have now dialed it back.

When it comes to trying to make vintage cars faster and faster I think of something Don Garlets said when asked about trying to make old dragsters faster "people died in those cars, you really don't want to make them faster".

I run my car to the rulebook. I am OK with mods that may not.be to the letter of the law if they fix a known failure / flaw asking as there is no performance  advantage.

Most cheating I know of usually involves oversize engines.

RacingComputers said:

FWIW  The term grass-roots has always been "At the lowest level" to me.  Drag Racing, Auto Cross, Road Racing, Dirt / Asphalt Circle track.

 

The basics from where to GO UPWARDS

 

YRMV

This is also how dictionaries define it.