OK, main story can be found at the link above!
Go racing for $2000. It seems impossible, right? Think again. When we first issued the call to action for the $1500 Challenge, we didn’t think anybody would attempt it. Why? Because low-buck racing just wasn’t a thing back in 1999. We assumed our first $1500 Challenge wouldn’t have any actual competitors, so our staff members built their own budget race cars to ensure we’d still have something cool to write about.
Good news: We were wrong! Our readers built some of the wildest cars we’d ever laid our eyes upon, and they did it with just $1500. After that first event, we upped the budget $500, officially creating our annual $2000 Challenge. 20 years later, the field of Challenge winners is full of some of the most innovative, clever, and just plain fast cars we’ve ever seen, so we created this definitive list of every $2000 Challenge winner so far.
Of course, there is one car missing: The winner of this year’s $2000 Challenge presented by CRC Industries. Registration is open now, so what are you waiting for? Show us what you can build.
When Mike Guido showed up to our $1500 Challenge with this car, we were shocked. How was this able to be built and fabricated in such a limited amount of time with an even more limited budget? Cars that were slightly breathed upon were the expectation–this was entirely the exception.
The donor car came from his UPS driver, who needed to get it out of his yard to meet property codes. "It was free, small, complete, light and free," Mike explains. He had received a second free Midget a few weeks before the announcement of the Challenge, so things were looking good. The rules state that a fair market value must be assigned to anything donated to the cause, but from personal experience, we knew that free MGs were out there—especially ones piled high with junk.
Both cars came with junk engines, so Mike installed the complete running gear—engine, transmission and rear axle-from a Cosworth Vega into the MG. The engine was set back as far in the chassis as possible, and the Vega rear axle just fit without needing to be narrowed.
The engine was given a little boost in power from an old nitrous system bought for $50 and a pair of old Stromberg Triumph TR6 carbs with home-made velocity stacks (muffler tubing). Covering the car was a coat of school bus yellow paint. Why this color? The team found an unneeded can at a body shop.
Drag time: 14.122 sec.
In 2001, we had two classes.
In the Race Class, Team Tobacco Free (formerly Dead Clown Racing) took the top spot in their MG.
Mike Guido and co. returned with even more ammunition for the $2001 Challenge. This car did once again stir up some controversy at the event, with many people claiming that the Midget—the product of several thousand dollars' worth of work in terms of man-hours— wasn't built to the spirit of the rules.
Mike and his people would argue just the reverse, however; their low-dollar, high-effort entry showed how some time, ingenuity and creativity can be used to turn nothing into something. The team's extensive documentation also took into account every pop rivet and screw used in the buildup of their car, which required a cash layout of less than $2001 to build.
Drag time: 12.817 sec.
In their second $2000 Challenge outing, Phil Kime and Bev Howe returned with another Datsun Z car, this one being a 1973 model.
Their story started with Phil's purchase of a four-speed 1979 Camaro RS for only $400. They considered using the Camaro, but as Phil explained, "a friend of a friend knew someone who had an old car I might be interested in." That old car turned out to be a 1973 240Z already fitted with a five-speed transmission, aftermarket camshaft, triple Weber carbs, electronic ignition, oil cooler, lightweight starter, fiberglass race seat and roll bar—and best of all, the owner was willing to do an even swap for the Camaro. That was a lot of race car for $400.
The 240Z still required a bunch of attention, though. They did all the mods themselves, including the bodywork and two-tone paint job.
Since the car came with lots of speed equipment already installed, they managed to come in way under budget, spending a total of only $1,200—including the $400 they paid for the Camaro. Their low-buck 240Z covered the quarter-mile in 14.007 seconds, almost two seconds faster than their previous Z.
Budget spent: $1200.00
Drag time: 14.007 sec.
For 2002, the $2000 Challenge went back to having only one overall winner.
Mongrel Motorsports wanted a lightweight, rear-drive car that featured independent rear suspension. The first BMW 2002 they found was too rusty to use, so a second one was located. The entire car was disassembled, cleaned and repainted, while an Eaton supercharger from a Ford Thunderbird was installed.
Budget spent: $1997.27
Drag time: 15.271 sec.
In order to outdo their winning entry from 2002, the Mongrel Motorsports team matched a lightweight platform with a 302 Ford V8 for which they paid only $75 dollars. A clean Miata was procured, and just about every spare piece of equipment was sold through eBay in order to bring their budget under the $2003 cap.
Budget spent: $1998.87
Drag time: 12.564 sec.
The third time was the charm for Erik and his Z, which broke a transmission its first year of competition and took top drag honors but finished third overall in 2003. This year, top-10 scores in all three areas of competition—which included a 0.3-second improvement over last year’s quarter-mile time—made this 383-Chevy-powered, nitrous-fed 280ZX the car to beat.
A home-built limited-slip differential helped traction, while nearly 300 hours spent on the body and paint wowed the concours judges.
Budget spent: $2004.00
Drag time: 11.190 sec.
Have you noticed a trend? V8 swapped-cars were the hot ticket.
Former competitor John Brown sold the team cheap, but trashed, Pontiac 16x8-inch wheels, and used drag tires and wheels were bought from “some Mustang guy.”
A home-brewed modified rear axle with Delrin bushings rounded out the new package, as did an affordable nitrous kit and better air cleaner for the Ford V8.
Budget spent: $1931.34
Drag time: 11.676 sec.
An aircraft mechanic by day, Stephen mated a powerful V8 Chevy 350 small block to the competent FC-chassis Mazda RX-7 frame and had an impressive showing in 2005. He stuck with the formula, improved the car’s power and power delivery, and snagged the overall victory this time around by just 1.453 points.
The team started the autocross by swapping to a set of beat-up Nissan 350Z wheels with used DOT-legal R-compound. The car was soon on the map with a solid fifth place.
Ample nitrous and used drag slicks helped Stephen secure a second-place finish in the drags despite stiff competition. A cut driveshaft delivered the power from the Chevy transmission back to the stock RX-7 rear end. The radiator, headers, mufflers, and springs were all old dirt track parts. “I had no idea what rate the springs were,” Stephen said, “but they seemed to work.”
Budget spent: $1721.72
Drag time: 10.926 sec.
Like a B2 Spirit stealth bomber, a large group of Procter & Gamble engineers from Ohio appeared out of nowhere and completely blew away the competition. Their ordinance was the Cheaparral, one of the most technologically complex automotive contraptions we’d ever seen on any budget, never mind a paltry two grand.
The team had many potential cars in mind when an Auto Trader ad for a $2000 rolled-over C4 Corvette appeared. They negotiated the price down to $1400 and went to work. A pair of small T25 turbochargers gave the already potent Chevy V8 about 5 psi of boost, improving power with a reasonable margin of safety.
The Cheaparral’s secret weapon was its vacuum downforce system based on the mechanics of its legendary namesake, the Chapparal 2J. A used snowmobile engine provided the drive for a surplus exhaust blower sourced from an M1 Abrams tank. The fan created a large cavity of negative pressure between the underside of the car and the ground, which in turn generated nearly 1000 pounds of downforce at any speed with a weight penalty of just 200 pounds. The entire system could be quickly removed, shedding weight for the drag strip.
Autocross ace Danny Popp took the Cheaparral to FTD on its first run—a good thing, since a sticking throttle made subsequent runs dodgy. The car’s ingenuity and creative engineering wowed judges and fellow competitors alike.
Budget spent: $1920.70
Drag time: Rained Out
This Hong Norr Honda CRX had a long history at the $2000 Challenge. It made its debut way back in 2002 as the turbocharged Team Decal Free entry, complete with a D16A1 engine sourced from an early Acura Integra. When the Hongs purchased the car from Decal Free’s Chris Abbot, it was in pieces and boxes. Hong Norr went all out with the project, spraying the CRX yellow and going over every square millimeter to extract maximum speed.
The car nearly won back in 2006, finishing just 1.5 points out of first place, and in 2007 it took fourth overall. Refinements for 2008 included an improved launch control setup for the MegaSquirt computer, the loss of an elaborate boost controller in favor of a simple “boost bolt,” and a nut-and-bolt detailing job that included 100 hours of polishing—labor is free, after all.
The team’s mad scientist, Matt Prescott, was amused by his “Hong-Norious” radiator setup: An old Mini radiator, a Honda Gold Wing motorcycle radiator and an intercooler from a Saab could all be found in the car’s nose. Matt also cut and welded the cam gears to his preference on a homemade jig.
The team performed extensive string alignments for a perfect autocross setup. The attention to detail paid off, as the little yellow CRX rocked the concours, improved on its best-ever drag time by a hair, and put in a dominant time at the autocross.
Budget spent: $1982.36
Drag time: 12.928 sec.
The turbo Honda CRX affectionately known as Gutty returned for its third year in a row, ready to fight for the win. The car’s name came from the weight-saving measures that were central to the build.
Some wheeling and dealing on craigslist resulted in fiberglass doors and a carbon fiber hood. Adam was able to salvage a badly dented Mugen header he found in a dumpster at Road America a few years back, transforming it into a side-mount turbo manifold for the massive T3 turbo they found on a junked Ford Thunderbird. The car’s 1.8-liter Integra engine was otherwise unchanged from previous events.
Big chunks of money came out of the $2008 build with the removal of the old turbo and manifold, paint, pinstriping, and big brake kit. The changes also saved weight, as Gutty was now down to less than 1700 pounds.
Fresh paint and $101 worth of silver vinyl gave Gutty a sweet new visual theme. It consisted of a reported 2,009 Honda logos and a patchwork of inside jokes from team members. Steady improvements in all three categories of competition finally paid off, as Gutty earned the top overall spot by a healthy margin.
In previous events, Gutty was bettered by turbocharged Hondas from the veteran Hong Norr team. Gutty principals Adam Jabaay and Luke Wilcox admitted that they were blown away by the attention to detail that the Hongs lavished on their Hondas. For $2009, Gutty was reborn with the overall win—and a victory over Hong Norr—firmly in mind.
Budget spent: $1899.00
Drag time: 11.840 sec.
Oh, Wreck Racing, how far you’d come by $2010. This student-run Georgia Tech club had one mission: To create and enter innovative cars in the $2000 Challenge. When it came to looking at the hard data, they had achieved mixed success: From their 2004 event debut to 2009, 12th place was their peak, and mechanical problems often left them stranded near the back of the field.
Even so, they always excelled at bringing ingenuity and ambition to the table, whether it was with their turbocharged 1984 BMW or their Lexus-powered 1991 Mazda Miata.
This time, the team was finally able to solve their Miata’s drivability issues, and the car shot up from last year’s DNF to take first place in the autocross and concours competitions as well as the top spot overall. Those smiles were well earned.
Other major improvements for 2010: The paddle shifters actually shifted the Lexus automatic into all four gears, and the team replaced their heavier roll cage with a thinner bolt-in version. They also designed and fabricated a transmission controller.
Budget spent: $1863.01
Drag time: 12.883 sec.
Vorshlag’s E30-chassis BMW debuted in 2010 with E36 suspension bits, a General Motors LS-series engine under the hood, and a too-weak T5 transmission behind it. That trans didn’t hold up at the drag race, but Vorshlag owner Terry Fair and his team hoped for better luck for 2011.
They put down a scorching autocross time and did very well in concours judging with their BMW Art Car theme.
Vorshlag was one of the few teams that managed to run the drag strip before the rain hit—and the transmission broke again while ripping up the 1320. Lucky, then, that the skies poured down shortly after the car limped back to the trailer. With no drag times to sour their result, the team had the overall victory in hand. That surely eased the sting of broken parts.
Budget spent: $1998.11
Drag time: 43.987 sec.
Pat had originally purchased this car for parts. He saw an ad for a turbocharged 1988 four-door Dodge Aries K and became intrigued. It turned out it was a base model that the seller was converting to turbo power, but there was a problem: a blown freeze plug. Pat offered $300, thinking he could always use it for its drivetrain parts and scrap the rest.
To Pat’s surprise, after hammering in a new freeze plug and adding coolant, the Aries ran just fine. He still felt that he just had a parts car on his hands.
Then he blew the engine in his primary car, a turbo Dodge Shadow that had made appearances at past $2000 Challenge events. The Shelby Dodge Auto Club national convention was around the corner, and Pat figured it would be quicker to continue the build on the Aries rather than redo the Shadow. In less than a month, the Aries was ready to race thanks to the local Shelby Dodge Auto Club guys.
The team fixed a plethora of problems with the car, added an intercooler and a nitrous oxide system, then set off for the convention—still in the original faded blue paint, looking for all the world like an ancient airport taxi.
“It was ugly, but for some reason it was cool,” Pat claims. “At that point, it was no longer a parts car, but my next GRM project.”
Pat and his team looked like major contenders at the 2012 event with a win in the concours and second place at the autocross. But then things got sticky: During their first launch at the drags, an axle broke, leaving the stub stuck inside the transaxle.
Team External Combustion, the group most likely to benefit from the Aries’s misfortunes, came to the rescue. After all, who doesn’t bring a 10-pound magnet to the track? The Jeep team came prepared. Pat yanked out the axle stub with the magnet, replaced the offending axle and got back in the game. Even with what turned out to be a damaged transaxle, he then posted an 11.694-second quarter-mile time at nearly 120 mph.
“Overall, I was very proud of the car, how it's performed and how well it’s held up,” Pat said. “Barry Miles, Scott Drega, Dave Skrab and Bill Cuttitta all played huge roles in building the car. It was very much a team effort.”
And that team was nicely rewarded. Even though they had been regular attendees since our first $2000 Challenge back in 1999 and had always brought a strong contender, this was the first time they earned the overall win.
Budget spent: $2006.10
Drag time: 11.694 sec.
Our overall winner was, once again, Pat Culkin and the Shelby Dodge Auto Club. His “ScAries” Dodge Aries made quite an appearance in 2012, pulling in the overall win with the turbocharged and impeccably built four-door K-car... yes, a K-Car.
Pat graced 2013 with the same drivetrain in a different chassis–one that had made a Challenge appearance a few years ago. The Dodge Shadow was still part of the large Chrysler K-car family, so the swap was fairly straightforward. His team didn’t have to transfer over the filing-cabinet fender flares. They didn’t even swap the huge rear wing. Their car’s livery for 2013 was a straightforward but well-executed flame job, complete with some flame-emblazoned shirts that the team members wore in uniform.
The engine build, head work and suspension reengineering were all done by Pat and his teammates, pinpointing again that in order to take the overall win in the Grassroots Motorsports $2000 Challenge, you should be long on skill and have lots of time to commit. You don’t need deep pockets or a very sophisticated car either. Even a K-car will do. Two times over.
Budget spent: $1999.78
Drag time: 11.319 sec.
Ed Malle took this seriously. Very, very seriously. The first page of his build book chronicled the time he’d put into this Fox-body Mustang: 788.5 hours on 214 work days over 20 months. Then there were six pages of sketches just showing how he arrived at the neat logo that he used on his racing efforts. And let’s not forget the pages and pages of calculations showing why, how (and then why again) he did every single thing on the car.
Ed has turned racing at this event into a science, and he did it quite well. In addition to this event, he competed at the Tire Rack Ultimate Track Car Challenge, and at Hod Rod’s drag week.
As far as modifications, there were too many to list. A 302-cubic-inch Ford V8 sat under the hood, and Ed remade most of the body out of fiberglass. He even built the seat himself out of plywood and fiberglass. The wheels were from an Explorer, and he widened them 4 inches with a welder and careful measurements; somehow, they were truer than the factory spec. The radiator sat in the trunk, connected to the engine by homemade fiberglass plumbing. There was a giant wing he bolted onto the decklid for the autocross, while for the drag runs he swapped the front hubs and brakes to pieces from a four-cylinder Mustang–they’re lighter and allow him to run compact spare front wheels to shed weight. He also moved the radiator up front for drag runs–again, to save weight. Oh, and there was lots of nitrous involved, too.
While other competitors were enjoying their dinner or drinking beer, Ed was working on his car. Refining. Adjusting. Configuring. He came to this event to win. Finally, he did.
Budget spent: $2009.43
Drag time: 11.031 sec.
If anybody deserved to win the Challenge, it was the Nelson family and their frighteningly quick Volkswagen Beetle. This car had been to the event before, and so had the family: They’d been chasing an overall victory for nearly a decade, always bringing faster, prettier, better-handling cars. More than any other team, PACC Racing has pushed the envelope at the Challenge–and it finally paid off.
The basics were simple: small car, big engine. The team found a Beetle shell being given away for free, then worked their magic on the engine, a 353-cubic inch Chevrolet–that’s a 350 block fitted with 0.020-over pistons. The Nelsons stuffed it with internal parts bought used, piece-by-piece, at local circle track swap meets and flea markets. Andrew Nelson is a skilled enough engine builder to lick a cam and immediately shout out the lift and duration, and he was clearly capable of building a big-power engine on a minimal budget.
Next, it was time for the chassis. The primary materials used here were steel and welding wire, as PACC built it from scratch. The result was drag runs that looked effortless, despite a 1/4 mile time deep into the 10s. On the autocross course, the bug was less composed, but a professional driver, an abundance of power, and a lack of weight worked miracles.
Speaking of weight, reducing it was the team’s main project before this latest Challenge. All told, they knocked more than 108 pounds out of the already-light car, even going as far as using a shorter engine drive belt (saving 0.6 ounces in the process). Their build sheet included a list of weight reductions that was two pages long, and it was incredible where the team found excess mass that could be removed.
Budget spent: $1977.00
Drag time: 10.396 sec.
Andrew Nelson and his family’s PACC Racing team spent their first several years as competitors here pushing the drag racing portion of the Challenge into new frontiers. Build a 10-second car for just two grand? And do so in a modest home shop while also putting in long hours at the day job? Not a problem.
Then they learned how to craft a car that could win the entire show. The Nelsons were now fielding vehicles that were fast in a straight line, handled the curves and looked like a million bucks. It was even more impressive when you consider that in real life, this family didn't even work in the automotive field.
For the $2015 Challenge, their 11th event, they finally took the overall win–and their competitors cheered for them every step of the way. The family’s planned car for the $2016 Challenge wasn’t quite done cooking, so they returned instead with their $2009 Challenge entry.
This yellow Beetle was a Beetle in spirit only. To give it that hot rod look–one worthy of “American Graffiti”–its body had been chopped 5 inches and narrowed nearly an inch and a half. Walk through the car with Andrew, and he’d point out low-buck creativity from stem to stern. That custom floor? The scrap metal used to make it came from an old washing machine and from the car’s own fenders, as rules changes briefly required all factory sheet metal to be present. Determined to run a fenderless Beetle anyway, PACC Racing shaped the factory fenders into their new hot rod, cleverly exploiting an unforeseen loophole.
The entry was a master class in how to build a car that would run 10.263-second quarter miles for less than the payout at some local bracket races. The answers were that it wasn’t easy, and it didn’t take 1000 horsepower. Instead, it was careful setup, tuning, and driving. Andrew designed and built the ladder-bar rear suspension himself, and between runs, he watched track and air conditions like a scientist. He even adjusted the ignition timing in single-degree increments as the humidity changed.
Andrew’s home-brewed, small-block Chevys are built with junkyard parts and tuned with love. Want to know his secret recipes? Just ask. He’s a regular contributor on our message board under the handle of wheels777.
In a field where many competitors were just happy to make it down the strip without breaking, PACC Racing truly brought a gun to a toothpick fight–yet the team still worked to raise all of the ships in the harbor, not just their own.
Budget spent: $1946.35
Drag time: 10.263 sec.
Wreck Racing is one of Georgia Tech’s many engineering clubs, and their formula is pretty simple: Come up with an insane idea for a $2000 Challenge car, build it, and then develop it over three years. Once those three years are up, it’s curtains for that project and time for a fresh mix of students to embark on a new crazy build.
Has this formula been successful? Kind of. Besides this Honda Insight, Wreck Racing has built a turbocharged 2JZ-swapped MG Midget, a supercharged Lexus V8-swapped Miata, a turbocharged E30-chassis BMW, and a Volkswagen GTI.
After breaking during the past two events, the Insight was in its critical year: It would either prove itself to be an excellent idea or break again, sending the team back to the drawing board without any trophies.
The build started with a $275 Insight shell, to which the club added a Subaru EG33 engine found in an Atlanta junkyard. (This is the flat-six that was originally installed in the Subaru Forester and B9 Tribeca.) The Georgia Tech team converted the all-wheel-drive transmission to power only the front axle before fitting the whole setup in the back of the Insight.
The suspension was equally wild. The front was swiped from a Ford Crown Victoria, while the back featured a home-built pushrod suspension using sportbike coil-overs. After they struggled with fragile aluminum structures for the rear suspension for two years, the team now used good, old-fashioned steel to locate everything.
Historically, aluminum had been both the Insight’s best feature and its downfall. The car was basically a bunch of pop cans glued together, and pieces of it kept breaking off. A new attachment method used big metal slugs glued into the car’s OEM unibody structures, with the custom work attached to these slugs. This approach finally worked, allowing the Insight to complete the event without sloughing off any vital parts.
Budget spent: $2010.25
Drag time: 13.893 sec.
The Justang represented the never-before-seen marriage between a 1999 Ford Mustang Cobra and a 1993 Subaru Justy. Perhaps it was love at first sight.
The car made its $2000 Challenge debut in 2015, with owner Tristan Sothern and the rest of the Circuit Motorsports team completing their initial build with just hours to spare.
The Mustang Cobra superstructure remained mostly intact. The wheelbase hadn’t been altered–length was simply removed from its nose and tail. The Subaru body was then modified to fit, kind of like an altered-reality funny car. Box flares accommodated the increased track.
The team returned in 2016 and improved to fourth overall on the merit of FTD at the autocross, but their car’s mid-14-second quarter-mile was well off the pace of the top contenders. Why so slow? As Tristan reminded us, the quad-cam engine is tired–really tired. The seller thought that the engine had blown up, hence the low price. In reality, only the clutch had exploded.
The car sat mothballed until just six weeks before the 2018 $2000 Challenge when the announcement of a second autocross replacing the drags inspired them to take a shot. The event had finally come to their strengths.
Some work was done before the event, though. Excessive fuel sloshing would cut the power, so the team found a smaller fuel cell, one sporting intact foam.
The Justang ran well during a test autocross before the event. Still, the team decided that they needed more traction, so they went even crazier by mounting 275mm Hoosier A7 rubber at all four corners. The Cobra replica wheels came from a swap meet. To cover the even wider stance, fender flares were added to the fender flares. Xzibit would be proud.
The vibrant Martini-inspired livery helped them earn third in the concours, and the already agile 2692-pound Justang, bolstered by its new extra-wide rubber, was untouchable in both the a.m. and p.m. autocrosses. It outpaced its nearest competitors by almost half a second on each course. It turned out the union of a $550 Mustang Cobra and a $100 Justy was, with a bit of expert counseling, an unbeatable match.
Watch the full GRM Live! episode featuring the Justang.
Budget spent: $1849.53
Drag time: Drag strip closed for repaving
Stop bench racing and start building: Registration for the Grassroots Motorsports $2000 Challenge presented by CRC Industries is open now. Head on over to the $2000 Challenge website to learn more and register your car, and then start building!
And just a reminder: The winner of this year’s $2000 Challenge will not only win the adoration of their fellow racers, but also trophies from White Pony and Copart, as well as a Millermatic® 211 MIG Welder from Miller Electric.
OK, main story can be found at the link above!
Hong Norr Dream-Team is back in $2019!
Bring your title! Bring your checkbook! Bring your wife!
Wow, what an eclectic mix of cars. Kinda makes it seem like almost any type of car could win in the right hands. Which means...I'm gonna need to borrow someone else's hands if I want to win. 
poopshovel again said:Hong Norr Dream-Team is back in $2019!
Bring your title! Being your checkbook! Bring your wife!
How old are you? Nobody has checkbooks anymore
Patrick said:poopshovel again said:Hong Norr Dream-Team is back in $2019!
Bring your title! Being your checkbook! Bring your wife!
How old are you? Nobody has checkbooks anymore
He's from the before-time.
Patrick said:poopshovel again said:Hong Norr Dream-Team is back in $2019!
Bring your title! Being your checkbook! Bring your wife!
How old are you? Nobody has checkbooks anymore
Do not sell me any more cars
I do. Two different banks.
In reply to DeadSkunk (Warren) :
Point made for me 
Drag racing this year?
Yes!
Congrats to all the winners these past couple decades, as well as to their competitors and compatriots. You have all been a great source of inspiration and entertainment, not to mention proof that I'm not the only one who comes up with ideas that just might be a little bit crazy when it comes to the cars.
Thanks again, and to all the 2019 entrants, GOOD LUCK and have fun! =D
Displaying 1-10 of 12 commentsView all comments on the GRM forums
You'll need to log in to post.
