New school rallycross cars

This is just a mental exercise here but my question is this...

Modern (say 2000+) vehicles are starting to bottom out in prices and in almost all rallycrosses I've been to or builds seen/in progress it is usually always pre 2000 vehicles (minus Subaru) so what say you GRM is the next E30 or miata or VW golf on the rallycross circuit?

I ask simply because I've been day dreaming of picking up an early S1 RX8 and building for dirt

Some days I wish I had kept my old 2003 Eagle Talon. Would have been better if it were the turbo version, but with 260k miles when I sold it and still running strong I would have loved to drive it through the dirt.

Yaris, ZX3 Focus, Mazda 3, R53 Mini Cooper S, Honda Fit, Accents.

The 00s were quietly the malaise era of truly small lightweight hatchbacks.

Pre-2000 cars are not very common at rallycrosses, that I've seen. Let's not lie to ourselves, Subarus make up most of the field for whatever reason, and all of the good Subarus are newer than that. If you run in any Stock class then you are practically required to have a new or newer car because the logistics of running an older car in Stock make it extremely difficult, so older cars tend to gravitate to Mod where the rules are a lot looser.

Prepared then becomes the playing ground for stock newer cars with more expensive tires on them The P rules are as restrictive as Stock in the ways that make running an older car difficult, although they are loosening up. Now it is legal to have missing fender liners or nonmetallic ground-facing undertrays in Prepared! (As long as they are forward of the passenger compartment) Not many people knew that the torn radiator flap on their '89 Whatsis technically meant they had to be in Modified.

But then, as I like to point out, give me a field of Stock cars, and I can prove most of them to not be legal for the class.

Knurled wrote: Now it is legal to have missing fender liners or nonmetallic ground-facing undertrays in Prepared! (As long as they are forward of the passenger compartment) Not many people knew that the torn radiator flap on their '89 Whatsis technically meant they had to be in Modified. But then, as I like to point out, give me a field of Stock cars, and I can prove most of them to not be legal for the class.

Sounds autocrossy!

captdownshift wrote: Sounds autocrossy!

The difference is nobody gives a crap 90% of the time

To answer the OP, FWD the answer is Neon, RWD the answer is Miata, AWD the answer would be 2.5RS but decent 2.5RSs are going for crazy money (found a rallycrossable one locally but he wanted $9k for it) so the answer there is Evo.

I know within the dc region minus the subarus it's a field of old bmws (Josh and the dirty e30 crew lol) and pre '00 cars minus my protege when summit point was still on the schedule.

Still would love to see how a stock-ish rx8 would do out there, my 10 is too new/nice for me to run yet...

There was a guy running an RX-8 in SR a while back in Detroit Region. Digging through their results, he hasn't competed in the car since 2009.

The biggest issue with driving newer cars is working with the often nondefeatable stability or traction controls. Defeating ABS by pulling a fuse is legal in Stock but this can be a bad idea on some vehicles. (Some cars use the ABS for realtime bias adjustment, for the power assist for standard brakes, or even the rear brakes entirely with the pedal only hydraulically attached to the front brakes) Reflashing/reprogramming is nebulously legal in Prepared - brakes are free and engine controls may be reflashed or piggybacked but not replaced, once could argue that the ABS is part of the brakes and traction control part of the PCM but stability control is not technically either of those systems. I am not sure anybody would have a way of proving illegality even if they wanted to, so it would be overlooked.

Me, I'd be thinking about working WITH the controls once the idea of reflashing comes into play. I'd love to be able to mess with active handling via the ABS, oh yes I would

Focus, Neon

But my favourite that I am intrigued to try would be a Sentra SE-R Spec V, pre-2004 to avoid the Brembos. I almost picked one up last year that was sub $800.