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When I was younger, I was into racing. Autocross, road course racing, and drag racing. It was a thrill!
As I have gotten older, I got away from racing and enjoy building and working on the cars in general. I haven't competitively raced (at an amateur/hobbist level) in over a decade.
I'd love to build a dedicated track car, but I just don't have the urge these days like I used to. My current project has a high investment in go-fast, handling, and braking performance parts...but I just cruise around on a SUnday to the local car meets with it these days. I haven't even gone past 70 in it in as long as I can remember
What prevents my involvement with racing, beyond the occasional jaunt down the quarter-mile on Thursday Night Test-and-Tune, is the cost, where "cost" has a general meaning. Acquiring the "right" components is only a small contributor to the overall cost. Parts break. The wrong parts get installed. Some parts work, some don't. Some work until they don't. Facilities are required to make proper repairs and changes. Those facilities are costly, as are the tools and equipment.
Doing all of the above, by oneself, is also costly and stressful. Friends are needed, but friends are too busy with career or taking their kids to college-interviews or whatnot. Before trying to engage in racing, with any modicum of success, one must first hone one's social-skills. It may even be necessary to relocate to a locale were there are persons with similar interest, with time and resources of their own. All of this requires a rethinking of how one lives and how one spends one's time.
Personally I adore racing, and would keenly love to build, test, and field fast cars. But some pursuits simply aren't practical. Billions of people don't have clean water or electricity. Hey, at least I've got that. Not being able to race, is very much a "first world problem".
I love cars but I have always thought that racing, in any form, was incredibly boring and a colossal waste of money. I don't see the point in building a $30k (and that's conservative) on a car that you're just going to take to the drag strip and see how fast you can run the quarter mile. To me that's just a waste of my time. I know different strokes for different folks, but I just can't get into any of it. To be fair though, I don't like any spectator sports (football, basketball, baseball, etc.) and find watching them to be worse than watching nothing at all. It just doesn't do it for me.
For me, I like the actual aspect of repairing cars and coming up with creative ways to do things that make the job easier, faster and saves wear and tear on your body. Doing the same thing over and over again gets boring to me, that's why I like independent shops because I see a wide variety of cars. Having worked at dealerships, I got so sick of seeing the same problems all the time.
Racing would be much the same for me. I can't see the point of building a $30k engine just to run one race and rebuild it again. It's too repetitive for me. Personally, my dream would be to restore classic cars but the market for that and the profits just aren't really feasible to do it professionally, however I would like to get a project car for myself and restore it to keep.
Are there any other cars guys that aren't into racing? Don't get me wrong by the way, I do like to drive fast and play around, and I love high performance cars, but WATCHING that kind of stuff is worse than watching paint dry IMO.
This is a refreshing take on cars. Preserving what you build, it's not simply a tool or means to an end.
Someone once put it better than I ever could: A luxury/exotic/classic car is not a point-A-to-point-B automobile. It is strictly a point-A-to-point-A. You don't stop anywhere you could get door dings, or visit drive-thru's, for fear of damaging your car.
I’ve never really gotten into racing, either. I like a street-oriented car, and if I start having to make sacrifices to turn it into a racer, it loses all the appeal for me. That’s probably why I have never been a fan of pro racing either, it doesn’t translate into a street experience to me at all.
I like street race cars like a subaru STI or a mitsubishi evo but the gas mileage on those things stink and the STI only uses premium as does the WRX. never raced but i wouldnt mind doing so; just dont got a racing car. Closest to a car that i would take to a track that i ever owned was a VW passat 2010 but overtime that car had too many expensive issues that made me sell it to someone else. I like speeding on a interstate long as cops aint around but thats as far as ive gotten with fast driving...
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