Morning all! As some of you may have seen, since buying this 250, my long since buried interest in cars/racing has been seriously unearthed. I was thinking of taking the Meg round a few tracks, doing some hill climbs etc, but I just cannot run the risk of busting it up or worse. It's my pride and joy and whilst I know it's designed to be driven, I'm just not sure I could take the 2nd most expensive thing I've ever bought round a track. So I'm thinking of getting a track car. Something cheap and cheerful, but road legal as I have no way to transport anything. After seeing Mark@MRS and his Clio, I'm thinking that might be the way to go, just maybe not as dedicated as him as I do not have the know how or space etc, to maintain a car like that myself. What I do have is a modicum of talent left over from my racing days and some spare cash each month. By that I mean I'd happily drive my track car to a garage to have new discs and pads fitted, or suspension etc, as opposed to doing it myself. I don't have oodles of money to replace blown motors or replace tyres every weekend though. I know it would never be the fastest thing out there, slower than the Meg in every way and I know it's being done on a budget, but it's the carefree fun I'm looking for and not having to worry about every swirl and scratch. So, any advice from those that do this would be great. Thanks, Nath.
Dedicated track cars are only ever worthwhile if you are going to heavily use the thing, as in on track a good 10 or more times a year. The cost to do that will easily run into a few £k PA on pretty much any car, the cost of consumables also ramps up massively every time you make a step up to driving faster, from my own experience with my race car the wear on things like tyres doubled every time I made a jump in driving performance. Now my 1100 kg/220 Bhp race car will go through tyres like the very hard wearing Dunlop DZ03g in about 3 hours of dry track time, my first set in 2010 lasted me 4.5k miles. If you are comfortable with all that and dedicating a fair amount of your time and money to track driving then go right ahead and do it, if not you can either use your current car and not worry about it so much, honestly its more likely to get scratched in a supermarket car park, or one can rent a track car from guys like bookatrack to do a few trackdays.
Me and a mate bought a 172 off eBay £700, now stands us at £1,400 inc 4 track days good tyres wheels brake pads new discs coilovers stripped it to death , it's a right laugh
Oooh, conflicting opinions, I'll get popcorn Thanks for all views though. I see the point about it only being worthwhile if I actually did use it enough and I can see me getting competitive and wanting to go faster, have better bits etc. But at £1400 for 4 track days and the sheer fun of driving around with no fear of wrecking my pride and joy, that's massively appealing. That said, I sent the wife a message earlier, outlining the plan and have had no response all day....which must be a sign of acceptance, surely?
Defo clio or mx-5 for low cost max fun, the clios seem to go really well in the wet too so you can save money by doing winter track days. Can't see any conflicting opinions on here.
Was in the Meg then just going half pace so you could keep up Sammy, you did well to stay with me, next time I'll put the hammer down.
Another vote for a Clio. I did Cadwell a couple of years a go in my old VX220. There was a guy there in a 2.0 16v clio that he had bought for 800 quid. He stripped it out, fitted a cheap set of coilovers and removed one of the headlamps to aid engine cooling. That was it. I would say he was as fast as any other hatch back car that was on track that day. I must admit that the thought of owning a track car that I didn't give a shite about is very appealing.
My old one and I miss it Last time I was at Oulton. The front bumper brackets were catching hence the noise but you get the idea. http://youtu.be/HQ3wBI7y5b4
