[Toshi]

I remember many years ago when Road and Track did a sports car challenge. It was MK4 Supra, MK3(or 4) RX7, Mitsu 3000 GT VR4, and the NSX.

The NSX was tops in the slalom, even over the awd/aws 3000. The Supra still stomped overall though. :love:

the 3000GT has been and always will be a pig. what is its curb weight, 3800 lbs? 4000 even?

plus, this whole "time attack" deal is nice since it represents tuners' best efforts since it is essentially advertising. best efforts in this case include professional drivers, R compounds, good suspension setup, lots of power, essentially everything that BMXman would do (i imagine). this makes for a more fair comparison than of stock cars on rubber of unknown quality tested by pedestrian car magazines.

 

[blue]

I remember a car mag saying the 3000GT was supposed to compete with the vette...ahahaa....

 

[S.K.C.]

Bitches, my Civic can compete with ANYONE...

 

[lovebunny]

Bitches, my Civic can compete with ANYONE...

rwd civic?

 

[atrokz]

all your bases are belonging to us...

 

[syadasti]

all your bases are belonging to us...

Seems kind of slow and overpriced to me...

 

[TheInedibleHulk]

Something like that. Right now my project car is an Integra, I still have a CRX that needs some love...but the basic idea would be to buy a car with whatever platform you wanted...and build up from that.

I have driven a few Lotus and I liked them....but now days I would rather buy a used NSX for about 25 grand and put another 15 grand into it...guaranteed to smoke any Lotus at a time attack event....of course I'm kind of a biased Honda guy

How did I know you had a crx.....

An NSX project would be cool I'll give you that, and I cant deny it would probably be faster than a stock lotus. Comparing a used car that has gone down 65 percent in value to a brand new car really isnt fair. Wait until elise's start being availible for 20-something and people start working on or swapping out that toyota engine. The NSX was overpriced and not that fast new, despite having a cool layout and fairly lightweight construction. If the NSX was ever the car it could have been without the overconservative bean counters at Honda making it all mushy, it would be even cooler. Of course thats nothing you can't fix. I dont know how they ever expected to sell a car with an NA V6 for 80g. Gotta love rapid depreciation though, just as long as youre on the right side of it. For my 40g Ill take a turbo E36 M3, or maybe a used Z06 plus a supercharger. And I'll stake my supercharged Z06 against your NSX any day .

 

[Anders]

How did I know you had a crx.....

An NSX project would be cool I'll give you that, and I cant deny it would probably be faster than a stock lotus. Comparing a used car that has gone down 65 percent in value to a brand new car really isnt fair. Wait until elise's start being availible for 20-something and people start working on or swapping out that toyota engine. The NSX was overpriced and not that fast new, despite having a cool layout and fairly lightweight construction. If the NSX was ever the car it could have been without the overconservative bean counters at Honda making it all mushy, it would be even cooler. Of course thats nothing you can't fix. I dont know how they ever expected to sell a car with an NA V6 for 80g. Gotta love rapid depreciation though, just as long as youre on the right side of it. For my 40g Ill take a turbo E36 M3, or maybe a used Z06 plus a supercharger. And I'll stake my supercharged Z06 against your NSX any day .

knowing absolutely nothing about cars, i do love the lotus. theres a vid on google between a stock elise and a elise with a modded honda engine

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5439352464577164033&q=lotus+honda&pl=true

 

[atrokz]

Seems kind of slow and overpriced to me...

How do you figure, the 997 GT3 has not been tested. the one you are refering to is the 996 GT3 with what, 40 less horsepower. that, and try driving your go-kart in anything but nice weather. And slow?

Still a nice go cart though!

 

[syadasti]

How do you figure, the 997 GT3 has not been tested. the one you are refering to is the 996 GT3 with what, 40 less horsepower. that, and try driving your go-kart in anything but nice weather. And slow?

Still a nice go cart though!

Ariel Atom 330 hasn't been tested either - higher HP/ton than 997 or even F60, so that extra 30 brings it over the top of their list...

Another great option is the Radical SR8 550kg for 60K pounds:

Radical SR8 smashes Nürburgring lap record by over 20 seconds - Video
....
The £60,000 Radical SR8 is in reality a road-legal race-car powered by a high-revving 2.6-litre V8 engine, built in-house by Powertec, developing 360bhp at 10,500rpm. During the run it reached a peak speed of 161mph, while the aerodynamics generate two and a half times the downforce of the SR3; combined with some very trick dampers, this set-up enabled the extraordinary cornering speeds required for a sub-seven minute lap.

He crosses the line less than seven minutes since he was last there, covering the 12.9 miles at an average speed of 109.5mph. Just imagine what he could have done on slicks! (note - To break the production car lap record, the SR8 needed to be road legal, which means an SVA test and of course road legal tyres.)

 

[Toshi]

atrokz does have a point: a lot of these cars aren't really road cars any longer. as long as it can be registered for street use in the u.s. i'm satisfied tho

997 GT3 video:

http://tunertrader.vidiac.com/recentvideos/9/AF9F4B41-8AE5-4D64-8CB3-ABFE84CA3F1C.htm

my caption: "for when you feel the need to do-ri-fu-to while wearing an expensive watch"

 

[syadasti]

atrokz does have a point: a lot of these cars aren't really road cars any longer. as long as it can be registered for street use in the u.s. i'm satisfied tho

Well they are street legal. Most supercars won't be as fun in the rain either. Still this guy did well with shoddy tires, missing parts, less than ideal setup, and a wet track:

Which it has and, more to the point, made it usable and reliable. Make no mistake, 380bhp in a 550Kg sports racer is mighty quick in anybody’s terms. The track was damp, the tyres were worn out, the SR8’s ride height had been raised by a large chunk to cope with passengers and the track’s surface (Bumpingthorpe&#8230 and the rear undertray was missing. Despite that I managed a lap time less than a second shy of the best Radical test driver and all round superfast Dutch chap Michael Vergers ever did in the turbo version on a dry road.

The SR series car are even crashworthy:

SR9 Passes All FiA Crash Tests - 7th February 2006

Ready for lift-off!
The last major hurdle in the production of Radicals SR9 was surpassed with flying colours today (Tuesday 7th February) at Cranfield University.

...

The Radical passed with flying colours. The chassis deceleration must be no more than 25g. The Radical pulled only 20g while the dummy must see no more than 60g. “Radical Man” only endured 44g

 

[ALEXIS_DH]

taking about affordable and fun track cars..

then i was in high school, mid 90s suzuki swift gti track cars were all the rage. me and a hs friend used to track them after school with a few other gtis. nice times.

they were pretty cheap, had 1.3 liter 100hp engines that buzzed up to 7000 rpm gutted and rollcaged were around 850kg.
but more importantly, and the reason i think they were great little track cars is they (with a few little modifications) could pull 1.0g. and were very cheap to mantain and build.