Does your Challenge car wear a neutral color?

Here's my bottom line...

I left the 2014 Challenge with a complete, reasonably well sorted car. I won 2nd place in the autocross. The one area I had a lot to potentially gain was in the Concours. 

I spent almost 1000 hours during the next year working on the appearance and Presentation of the car. 

At the 2015 Challenge, The car was not pulled aside for feature photos, and was not featured in the magazine. I didn't get the impression that door was open. 

So yes, I would ignore the appearance in the future. It was too much of a sacrifice for my entire family for me to spend that much time devoted to something that seemingly did not get noticed.  I'm coming for the fun.

Im not griping. I learned a lot, and came to understand the creative nature of the Concours (and realized that my previous understanding of the Concours was flawed- my score was actually quite fair based on the rules). It made me a great judge a couple years later. 

Others may feel differently, but if featured pics of Challenge cars are not the norm, I will not spend a lot of effort on the appearance. 

My $.02

SVreX said:

Here's my bottom line...

I left the 2014 Challenge with a complete, reasonably well sorted car. I won 2nd place in the autocross. The one area I had a lot to potentially gain was in the Concours. 

I spent almost 1000 hours during the next year working on the appearance and Presentation of the car. 

At the 2015 Challenge, The car was not pulled aside for feature photos, and was not featured in the magazine. I didn't get the impression that door was open. 

So yes, I would ignore the appearance in the future. It was too much of a sacrifice for my entire family for me to spend that much time devoted to something that seemingly did not get noticed.  I'm coming for the fun.

Im not griping. I learned a lot, and came to understand the creative nature of the Concours (and realized that my previous understanding of the Concours was flawed- my score was actually quite fair based on the rules). It made me a great judge a couple years later. 

Others may feel differently, but if featured pics of Challenge cars are not the norm, I will not spend a lot of effort on the appearance. 

My $.02

You brought an engineer to an artist fight. 

But I'm willing to bet you are a much better artist now than you were before.

OMG 3 pages of arguing about what colors to paint our cars and I can't even berking decide what big block to put in a Pinto. 

In reply to Robbie :

Probably true.

But I am also a better engineer than I was before, and know how not to invest a boatload of time. 

So, if there happened to be a retro-ish thinder chicken, but it was executed in beige would those two things offset?

Seems to me that if you want cars that look good on the cover, the Concours rules should be changed to reward cars that will look good on the cover.  That doesn't mess with the budget rules at all but presumably gets the GRM staff what they want.

SVreX said:

Explanation...

If I got the sense that the magazine was unlikely to feature a picture of my car, and I didn't need the Concours points, I wouldn't waste my time. 

Which is precisely where I was. I only entered the concourse at the urging of John Welsh and Andrew Nelson. They were right and I gained a couple of points to remain in a top-ten position. I had told the rest of my team that we'd just take the 12 points because I know a silver Miata isn't going to make the magazine no matter how well it's performs in the dynamic score (4th overall). My 2018 car needs paint to meet my personal standards and it will get the brightest tractor paint TSC sells. If that makes it more photogenic , great, but having fun is the driver at this point.  

Edit: For me "fun" means the dynamic portions of the weekend and hanging out with the crowd.

In reply to David S. Wallens :

2004 the word was black cars don't show well in photos, and then the CRX made the cover.  Mixed message.  I wish we'd known your challenge sooner.  We've been using budget based paint choices not editorial based choices.

Hmmm, that Mystery Machine had colors.  Is it that time of the year that the "Who's on the Cover?" chatter starts?

In reply to wheels777 :

I walked around the hotel lot Thursday evening and pointed at one car and said "There's the cover car". A bright orange, wide body, winged AMC on gigantic rubber. 

DeadSkunk said:

In reply to wheels777 :

I walked around the hotel lot Thursday evening and pointed at one car and said "There's the cover car". A bright orange, wide body, winged AMC on gigantic rubber. 

If that happens ill need to find a case of magazines to hand out to everyone i ever met.

I totally understand how a pretty, colorful car on the cover sells magazines, but a 9.5 second flat black Datsun sends me a message of what's inside. 

I did notice that there were a lot of cars at the $2017 Challenge that were simply Not pretty.  I assumed the budget all went to speed. 

And now to try the Forum's new upload feature.  Photo from $2011.  We made bigger rims for $2012.

Damn  Im a little late, I thought this was the Swedish cars at the Challenge thread

Knowing you guys, I'm going to set up a sunglass concession for 2018 challenge

Ordering chrome vinyl now. They have a lot of really bad options on ebay. 

Who wants in so I can order in bulk? 

I actually was just talking to Duster about this theme. 

Do it!!!!

I will say, Duster and Steve made a clear choice with that wing. They could have pulled it out of the budget and added some laughing gas, but it stayed. I don't think it did anything for performance but it made one hell of a visual statement. Visuals are not all about color. 

Edit to add: I think the Nelsons black car could have been visually 100% more striking with $20 in vinyl or paint. I'm not sure how it photographed, but I have a hard time believing that you get a sense of what it really is without standing next to it. I also know that car had a single purpose and it accomplished that in spades. Can't wait for the Nova. 

Well, the Rampage should be wearing far more interesting (and cohesive) colors than it was this year, so hopefully that will help a bit.

And I'm not planning on painting it because of the concours, I want to paint it so it simply looks as good as I think it is- hopefully my bodywork and painting skills are up to the task...

mazdeuce - Seth said:

I will say, Duster and Steve made a clear choice with that wing. They could have pulled it out of the budget and added some laughing gas, but it stayed. I don't think it did anything for performance but it made one hell of a visual statement. Visuals are not all about color. 

Edit to add: I think the Nelsons black car could have been visually 100% more striking with $20 in vinyl or paint. I'm not sure how it photographed, but I have a hard time believing that you get a sense of what it really is without standing next to it. I also know that car had a single purpose and it accomplished that in spades. Can't wait for the Nova. 

Meeting a performance goal does not mean we don't want a cover.  Just sayin'. 

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

Exactly.  That was $100. Additionally, there was roughly $250 total in our budget for pure cosmetics. I personally spent ~40 hours with a 1 inch wide brush redoing all the white, including the underside. Thats not includig the paintjob or hand built flares or body work. 

Concourse is enough of the competition points to make a significant impact on the results. 

Dazzle paint camo is what came to mind when I started reading this thread.  But it's mostly black/white/grey.  I'm gonna have to come up with a variation that looks good in color because my car is seriously boring white.

KyAllroad (Jeremy) said:

Dazzle paint camo is what came to mind when I started reading this thread.  But it's mostly black/white/grey.  I'm gonna have to come up with a variation that looks good in color because my car is seriously boring white.

You know that's just a black and white photo right? 

thatsnowinnebago said:

KyAllroad (Jeremy) said:

Dazzle paint camo is what came to mind when I started reading this thread.  But it's mostly black/white/grey.  I'm gonna have to come up with a variation that looks good in color because my car is seriously boring white.

You know that's just a black and white photo right? 

Dayum!  Thought I went colorblind.  WHEW!

Ovid_and_Flem said:

thatsnowinnebago said:

KyAllroad (Jeremy) said:

Dazzle paint camo is what came to mind when I started reading this thread.  But it's mostly black/white/grey.  I'm gonna have to come up with a variation that looks good in color because my car is seriously boring white.

You know that's just a black and white photo right? 

Dayum!  Thought I went colorblind.  WHEW!

No, that's just from before color was invented.  Everyone knows color wasn't invented until the 50s.

I'll just leave this here.