"Tuner Car Challenge"

No Nitrous, treadwear of 140 or greater.

No other rules!

Local only - but are other regions doing it?

While I'm fairly certain an RX-8 won't be the ultimate platform for such a class, it would be fun to see what you could do with mild forced induction, crazy weight reduction & aero, and big fat Hankooks on 10-11" rims. Lots of $$$ for "just" local fun, however.

I'd really like to see what would show up if such a class were made national. I'm sure it would become an AWD class, but maybe some super-light RWD or FWD platform could be made into a terror as well.

 

We have two. California Street Touring for 140 TWR and California Street Modified for race rubber. Race what you brung. CST was created a couple of years ago and is very popular. Turbo minis, turbo 240s, Corvettes.

 

We have this locally as well - STO, for Street Touring Open

It's always the biggest class of the event and gets pretty competitive. It also serves as a good "catch-all" for novice drivers to play around in a fun class without worrying about the real class they actually fit into. Most would normally be in a SP or SM class. We've found that a lot of people new to autocross get turned off by the classing structure at first, so STO allows them to try it out for a season or so before they start making drastic car changes to fit in a certain national class.

 

With high pwered cars on street tires, I would definitely say that awd cars would be the platform to have.

With that said, if I was building my RX-8 for Street Mod over a few seasons, this would be a nice local class to play in as the car was being developed.

 

I have a freind who is going to show up in a full-electric conversion 1st gen RX-7. No place else for him to play. Should be a fun ride, if he can keep it pointed straight.

 

I think the winning car in an "Open", treadwear-limited class is probably going to be an A-Mod car with the widest rubber an most powerful engine that will fit. Aerodynamics will help the (relatively) high treadwear tires get some grip. The A-Mods also tend to be ultra-light, high-power rides anyway. Uncork the rules and I think that's what to start with.

 

^Car has to be a street-legal car. Forgot that one other rule.

 

What does "street legal" mean? Registered? Not hard in most states. An A-Mod can be registered and licensed as a "kit car" with minimal lighting and other equipment. Whoever does it will win handily if everyone else sticks to "street" cars. It's the nuclear option when the competition is hand grenades.

 

This is why we can't have nice things.

 

Perhaps that's true, but I seriously doubt that somebody who has gone to all the trouble to build an A-Mod car (or pretty much any other highly prepped autocross-specific car) will toss their race rubber and then bolt a bunch of extra weight on to make it street legal, just to win a local trophy in a class full of door-slammers.

But hey, if that's your thing, go for it!