This'll prolly get me banned...

I like the challenge, building to a budget is a great challenge and it shows really great ingenuity and shows other people what you can do with resoursfulness and little cash.

Clearly for people like Thompson there is the UTCC so sounds like the mag has all the bases covered. Maybe an award for cheapness/performance would make it that much cooler. It wouldn't take away from the overall focus but it could highlight some great cars done for less money that may not have won but did really well for what it was.

Without a cap, you get cars like the HKS Altezza:

Purpose built for time-attack, I don't believe any expense was spared! Not a bad thing per se, but not too many people on the GRM board have that kind of scratch to put into a car!

There are plenty of budget-minded people working on cars for this year's UTCC. I'm particularly looking forward to the salvaged EVO being prepared by the Westside crew from the $200X Challenges. We know they can build strong 4G63s, so what will happen when they get 4 drive wheels instead of two?

I'm all for a budget-minded class in the UTCC, but I think I'd rather it were more informal. One of my favorite things about the UTCC is the wide-open rule set; fastest guy wins, no excuses.

[edit] Girls can win, too. [/edit]

An award for best low-buck car makes more sense to me than a whole class for them, and is much easier to handle fairly.

hmm if I scroundge up some scrap plywood and wobbly used castor style wheels, I could probably have some sort of cart put together for ~$0.75 so if a $150 crapbox can average 60mph around a track I would need to average faster than .3mph to win.

I am going to walk away with this sucker

93celicaGT2 wrote:

stroker wrote:

Ian F wrote: But maybe instead of having an absolute $ limit, maybe have a sliding scale based on $ spent on the build as a points modifier against the posted lap time?

No $ limit at all. If my $1000 car is 51% as fast as your $2000 car, I win. Your $10K car better be 10 times as fast (lap time 1/10th as large as mine) as my $1000 car, or I win.

That's not entirely realistic. It's got to be on a law of diminishing returns. Think about it.... $10k doesn't mean 10x as fast as a $1000 car. It might mean 10 SECONDS faster, depending on course.

I agree... the modifier couldn't be that simple... because in that case you would still end up scrounging like mad to stay within a certain budget...

As an example, I plan to build my ES as cheaply as I can.. .but at the same time, unless I want to butcher the car to hell, I pretty much have to keep the B20 engine... and if I want a B20 that will allow a 1800 to get around a track with any level of speed, then it ain't gonna happen for $2000... and as mentioned elsewhere, I'm not going to spend a week fabricating something I can buy for what I consider to be a reasonable amount of money.

However, I disagree about removing the $200X factor from the Challenge... IMHO, that's the main point of the competition... granted, if I were to do it, it would likely only be with a lo-cost...

PaulY wrote: I like the challenge, building to a budget is a great challenge and it shows really great ingenuity and shows other people what you can do with resoursfulness and little cash. Clearly for people like Thompson there is the UTCC so sounds like the mag has all the bases covered. Maybe an award for cheapness/performance would make it that much cooler. It wouldn't take away from the overall focus but it could highlight some great cars done for less money that may not have won but did really well for what it was.

I actually prefer the basic format of the challenge to the UTCC, I just don't like the budget cap. I'm more interested in an all round car, hence the challenge, than just a pure track car, but I hate the artificial budget cap.

Ian F wrote: However, I disagree about removing the $200X factor from the Challenge... IMHO, that's the main point of the competition... granted, if I were to do it, it would likely only be with a lo-cost...

Respectfully I disagree. The point of the challenge is ingenuity and doing more with less, not penny pinching to the point of pointlessness. My favorite cars from the challenge have been the following:

VW Bug hot rod
Shogun-esc Festiva
AWD Tracer
The Zamboni

Non of those cars won, but they all scored approx eleventy billion on Adrian's 'Cool E36 M3-ometer' Non of those cars would have been more or less cool if they'd cost $50 or $10,000, but if there was no cap I for one think we'd see a greater variety of cars.

Yes but with out a cap why build something when you can buy it? Why not just add a "fastest street car" award to the utcc?

PaulY wrote: Yes but with out a cap why build something when you can buy it? Why not just add a "fastest street car" award to the utcc?

Because some of the coolest things around are built by people in their own garages. So what if they pay for some or all of it? There are plenty of people with money who still build cool and interesting vehicles.

Something else. Back in the dim and distant past I used to read CCC in England, in the 80's they had a sort of cool readers car competition, no salary cap. That's where I first read about the John Beardmore who's space frame minor is so beloved around here. He took his Rover engined Reliant Kitten Pro Stock style car to that event. I also remember reading about a mid engined Skoda with a Fiat Twin Cam in the back and a Euro Mk III Escort converted to rear drive with Sierra Cosworth running gear long before Ford made the Escort Cossies. Those were way cool cars that people built for the fun of it and because they loved it, not hampered by a silly budget.

20's years ago I was stitching two crashed cars together to make one usable shell. I was bending up scrap hand railings to make exhausts for myself and friends and fabbing my own mufflers from scrap because I had zero cash etc etc etc. These days if (when) I start messing about with project cars again I'd buy some mandrel bent tube or buy a muffler and find a single non crashed shell as a starting point. Would the end result be any more or less cool than the $xxxx challenge friendly methods of 20 years ago? No, but it may not fit the $200x challenge rule set. Cool cars are cool cars and that has very little to do with either purchase price or value in my book.

How about for one year just make it the GRM challenge, do away with the price cap but award 25% of the points on cool value, a bone stock anything is going to score low on that. See what happens, you might have an even better event.

I dont think we would see the same ingenuity without a budget cap at the challenge.

As for the UTCC, i think the low buck part should be a seperate trophy. Dollars spent X Lap time (in sec.) = lowest number wins.

John's RX-Metro is right in the spirit of things i wanna see...running right alongside a Formula Fordabusa.

If you were to do a budget, do a Lemons style where the safety gear (and maybe tires) are free. I can weld, but if I were to build a real track car I wouldn't trust my self taught welding up a roll cage. Same with the seat and fuel cell.

Now that I think of it, this is sounding more and more like Sport Compact Cars USCC. I think modified is taking that on i just haven't seen their magazines lately, did they go under now too?

In USCC I've seen a mid-engine integra, supercharged v8 e30, a monster of a 2002, and a lot more interesting stuff. Sure you see a lot of shop cars and some come with all that useless pop and flash but it was a great challenge. The way they made it work was they had entries and they picked like the top 10 or something. Look into it and tell me if that matches what your thinking.

In reply to PaulY:

No I saw the SCC USCC, too much bling and high end. I don't think removing the $ cap from the GRM challenge would necessarily bring out $150k Ferrari's, but I do think we'd see some really cool cars.

PaulY wrote: In USCC I've seen a mid-engine integra

Actually that car was way cool and just the kind of thing I think we could see. The budget for that wasn't outrageous.

Adrian_Thompson wrote: This is why I want to do away with any stupid $ limit. Talking challenge type competition here rather than UTCC let's take 2 cars. First guy turns up with a Ferrari Enzo, second guy turns up a front mid engined RWD Escort that he/she built up over the last three years. Both cars run the same time in the drag strip and autocross, both are equally shiny and get the same concourse score, but for me the Escort will out score the Enzo on the cool factor and finish much higher up the points. I don't care if the Escort cost $2009.7654321 or if it cost $5,000. I just hate the budget cap. The lack of budget cap is what makes the UTCC more interesting. I'd love to see those two cars go head to head and I don't give a berkeley which cost more.

I love the Challenge, but you're right. UTCC is something different. It's not UTCCMDTDR. (Ultimate Track Car Challenge Measuring Dollar to Dollar Ratio)

It's already split into classes, no need to go further. This is about finding the fastest track car out there, money be damned.

Tom Heath wrote: There are plenty of budget-minded people working on cars for this year's UTCC. I'm particularly looking forward to the salvaged EVO being prepared by the Westside crew from the $200X Challenges. We know they can build strong 4G63s, so what will happen when they get 4 drive wheels instead of two? I'm all for a budget-minded class in the UTCC, but I think I'd rather it were more informal. One of my favorite things about the UTCC is the wide-open rule set; fastest guy wins, no excuses. [edit] Girls can win, too. [/edit] An award for best low-buck car makes more sense to me than a whole class for them, and is much easier to handle fairly.

This.

93celicaGT2 wrote: This.

I don't understand this post, am I missing something?

Adrian_Thompson wrote:

93celicaGT2 wrote: This.

I don't understand this post, am I missing something?

Was just agreeing with Tom. And on a level, i certainly agree with you, too, concerning the UTCC. Just don't agree with the Challenge.

The Challenge is to build something cool and fast for $200x. Not just to build something cool and fast, period. Anyone can build something cool and fast. It takes someone special to do it on strict peanuts for budget.

Adrian_Thompson wrote: In reply to PaulY: No I saw the SCC USCC, too much bling and high end. I don't think removing the $ cap from the GRM challenge would necessarily bring out $150k Ferrari's, but I do think we'd see some really cool cars.

Your right a lot of cars are like that cause thats what the magazine figured the audience wanted to see and since they were hand picking cars that's what got in but If you had no dollar car why couldn't some one show up in a Ferrari? It's a car, someone built it, it's fast.

Adrian_Thompson wrote: This is why I want to do away with any stupid $ limit. Talking challenge type competition here rather than UTCC let's take 2 cars. First guy turns up with a Ferrari Enzo, second guy turns up a front mid engined RWD Escort that he/she built up over the last three years. Both cars run the same time in the drag strip and autocross, both are equally shiny and get the same concourse score, but for me the Escort will out score the Enzo on the cool factor and finish much higher up the points. I don't care if the Escort cost $2009.7654321 or if it cost $5,000. I just hate the budget cap. The lack of budget cap is what makes the UTCC more interesting. I'd love to see those two cars go head to head and I don't give a berkeley which cost more.

dude. the idea as proposed doesn't involve any sort of budget cap. want to spend $100,000? go for it. you probably wouldn't win, but feel free to spend away. doing the most with the least is exactly the point.

if you're talking about the Challenge, or something else, OK. but that seems like a different thread.