BooRadley

Oh, I know absolutely nothing about cars whatsoever. Nevermind the fact that I'm in the society of automotive engineers and have been a fabricator/engine guy for the Formula SAE collegiate design competition. That equates no knowledge of cars whatsoever. I don't design these vehicles but probably will co-design next years' car.

Congratulations. I know people with 300k on ford escorts and chevy S10s, both with original engines. This is not an accomplishment anymore, even for domestic car companies. You are more likely to wreck a car before it runs out of useful life. It boils down to care in maintenance and driving style. If you race something, you are going to tear it up. Period. Components can and will fail.

So have many, many small cars. And you brung up an interesting point, by mentioning the SCCA. Triumph Spitfires are all hideous winners at SCCA tracks. The unmodified US versions produce 65-70 horsepower on a good day. How can they do well, being so outdated and underpowered and not uber-lightweight ( S2000 is a much better modern car ) ? They are very light, and suitable for winning on the very tight low-speed SCCA tracks. Hell, I have never seen anybody do a faster lap time than a 125cc shifter cart on a SCCA track, even porsches and race-only supras.

The point being? If the only thing you consider is SCCA racing, then a race-modified civic could be a far superior race car than 98% of RWD 'sports' cars. If they actually hit a real "track" with a straight longer than 300 feet, then you might actually see a corvette performing at its optimum level. With a 2000 feet straight like many actual tracks have, you can hit serious speeds . A race modified civic would be able to hit good speeds, but sheer horsepower is the key in high speed situations. The cars weight makes less of a difference as wind resistance increases WAY faster than rolling resistance.

Noone ever said honda couldn't make sports cars. The NSX is an overpriced hunk of crap with civic parts-bin interior but it is a solidly performing car. The S2000 is a downright awesome car with very few flaws.

But I'm judging these cars based on what they are sold as. A civic is an economy car. It is classifed as such by every source. In stock configuration, it has low amounts of horsepower and a driveline to suit that. I doubt a stock transmission/rear differential would enjoy a 240 hp race engine running 8000 rpm for long periods. If you want to spend the time and money to completely gut a civic , go right ahead. I've never seen conclusive proof about race-only civics performance, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. $10,000 doesn't go a far way. But once you start swapping engines that's a very expensive proposition for a car that costs $14,000 new. Especially when then engines run $2000+. The supercharger would be be $3000 alone. Would you run stock fuel injection? $10k is a far cry from creating a full sized race car, unless you have an absolutely full shop and employees and all the time in the world to correctly tune a supercharger setup. Fuck, a good ECU would run $3500. You can mod out any car in the world, it's just a question of time and money. But don't you dare tell me race modding a civic(or any car) is either cheap or not time consuming. One of my friends races chevettes. This is the easiest circle-track class for anyone to get into, as the engines have to remain stock . It still took him every weekend for several months to get the car race ready.

I still DO NOT see the point in dumping so much time or money in any car , unless it is your livelihood. I am a die hard car guy, but some of the stuff people do makes no sense whatsoever to me. I'll stick to watching racing on TV or enjoying my street car for what it is. Driving around a gutted interior civic with a hand grenade of an engine is not my idea of fun. Nor is towing it to an SCCA event.