Topic: When $500 isn't $500
After following this "Miata skipped the curse" drama for the past few days, and listening to all the opinions given, I've gotta wonder; where are we, the race teams, taking Lemons racing? When I first heard of Lemons racing it all seemed quite simple to me. Find a car for less than $500 and turn it into a race car. Said formula netted us an 80th place finish at CMP this past spring and was a blast. But as you meet other teams and follow the posts on the forums you begin to see that others interpret the $500 rule a little differently.
But what if $500 has to be the bottom line at the end of the day? Well that of course opens things up dramatically. Spec Miatas, SCCA E30's, Mustang Cobra's and even Corvettes become viable options. Heck, I bet you could make money turning a corvette into a Lemon's racer, those Vette guys pay top dollar for OEM parts (I should know, I used to be one). Over on another post "cpmskinny" made the comment that he could buy a $40,000 Ferrari and sell off $39,500 worth of parts to come in at budget. I hope he was kidding, but he'd be legal.
I know you can do this, and I know even Judge Martin has challenged someone to try a Corvette, but should we? I cannot speak for Jay and company regarding their intentions when they had this idea. Did they intend for people to buy expensive sports cars and part them off to come in under budget? My gut says probably not, but what do I know. As the name implies, one would think you should buy a car on it's last leg (a lemon) and give it a glorious death on a race track for fun.
Now I've got no problem racing against the "totally legit based on the rules" spec whatever. They're just another car on the track to me. Some people are just hyper competitive and will do anything within and just outside the rules to win. That's OK. But as for our team, we'll stick to our $100 Colt and race her till she dies. And we will have a blast the whole time, whether we come in first or last. But this is Lemons racing, and you never know when the stars might align just right and the little Colt sneaks in a 1st place finish!
Lab Rats Motorsports
1988 Mitsubishi/Dodge/Fiat Colt Carpocalypse Edition