@dculberson: As to your p.s., you're correct that dropping a worn out VW engine in the back of a decrepit French sedan is a far cry from a scratch built tube frame race car, but a scratch built tube frame race car with a Renault body is what you have here. Did you notice that the engine location changed from rear to…
@dculberson: My time isn't free. Why should skilled labor be less valuable than used parts? Just as it is offensive when someone says the S14 engine they had in their basement was free because they already had it, it is offensive when someone with a race shop and any number of certifications says that a couple hundred…
@russler: Add lightness.
Ford sold 33,000 of those things? Or were they all still in dealer inventories?
The cause of the fire is still unknown? It is a VW. I'm going with a fuel leak and an electrical short FTW.
@Spinnetti: The race is incidental but nobody would show up without it? Sorry, but the only thing backwards is holding clunker racing as an excuse to impose some art car mentality on people. A custom made car with 500 hours of skilled labor in it is a $50,000 car. Maybe it can't be sold for $50K, but that is what it…
Why even wait for the race? Just pick out the highest investment car in the paddock and bestow the IOE on it and then go home and let the real competitors race. This is the lamest IOE award yet, and that took some doing.
@Kuro: The joke is on you because I have two full passports. If you're in So Cal, I'll be happy to show them to you. It will only cost you your ignorant illusions.
@Novaload: I'm completely over the urge to gift tube frame racing cars with novelty bodies the IOE. This thing's mid-engine and central driving position mean that anything short of the overall win is a pathetic result.
The Saab should be a serious IOE contender, as demonstrated by its engine failure. Incidentally, the engine is the only Saab developed part in the car, and even that had Triumph roots.
Whoever edited that video needs to fall on their sword.
My parents bought a Plymouth Valiant Scamp with a 225 slant-6 in 1971. When we sold it in 1987, the engine and transmission were still going strong. It needed a new carburetor because when it was my parents car they never let the fuel tank drop below a 1/3rd full. When it was my car, I rarely put in more than a $1.75…
@Minardi Gras: With multi-race weekend use engine and transmission rules, F1 cars probably aren't such bad endurance cars anymore. That wasn't really my point though.
@OMGItsWeasel: Jensen Button received one of his championship winning Brawn F1 cars as a freebie. If he was friends with the organizers so they wouldn't claim his car, entering it would be just like most of the celebrated 'LeMons' of recent months.
A friend of mine has a 5-speed naturally aspirated PT cruiser that he uses to keep miles off of his S2000 and his wife's Sequoia. We took it around Buttonwillow a few times when the S2000 had axle issues. It was remarkably competent. Considering he travels all over San Diego to visit clients and his wife uses it to…
@Kuro: Do you really think you're right? You don't seem to have much going on. The world must be full of surprises for someone with your intellectual capabilities. May ignorance be bliss for you.
@Kuro: Looks like being wrong is your avocation. I attended the International School at Alberdingk Thijm College in Hilversum, NL. I lived in a duplex on Luitgardeweg, around the corner from a TV studio and theater. Many of my friends are US Marines who've done numerous tours of Iraq and Afghanistan. Implying I'm a…
You can really get a sense of how the power drops off as the air gets thinner. Very cool video.
@Kuro: I've lived in Europe and talk to people who spent years in the middle east all of the time.