Really confused by this comment... are you saying you were right last year? Because by all accounts, you’re not...

I won’t talk you out of it, but I would try and talk you out of using that to lament the departure of fun cars.

Especially if they plan on keeping whatever platform is next for a while, agreed. Easy to one day say “hmm, what about slicks?”

When I worked at VIR, this wasn’t something I thought about much because there’s not a ton of long-duration sustained load corners there. But my home track is Gingerman Raceway and it was…

It’s clear your logical process is sound, and frankly beyond the core unit of this discussion, I agree or would agree with you. However, the majority of non car people I know differ from those you know, including family. They WANT crossovers for the specific crossover reasons - sits higher, easier to load/unload…

THIS, thank you haha. 

I am well aware of this but your third point is why I kept my answer more narrow, yes. But this is a great expansion/clarification for anyone reading along here.

Also depends on the track, of course. There’s a few tracks with layouts that are kinder to this issue. 

What you’re arguing there is basically akin to saying that all gearheads tend to shop for performance stats and don’t pay attention to other aspects of the car. Sure, that’s true for some, but not all, not even the majority. 

There are continual shifts and then there are actual trends in interest and interest has…

Of all the auto industry conspiracy theories I like to laugh at, this one is at the top of the list.

You should spend a bit more time talking to consumers who aren’t car people. You might learn something. 

Regarding No. 4 - quite often. There’s usually 1100-1200 entries at Nationals and over half of the classes don’t even fit cars that have less than 4 seats.

Though leaning back to your point a bit, the amount of cars that *should* be daily drivers that are reserved for autocross-only is fairly humorous as well.

This. You’re basically losing the engine and not much else. Which yes, it sounded amazing, but had some issues. As someone who likes the Mustang and likes to do track days/etc., the Mach 1 sounds just about perfect to me. 

If you want something class competitive in autocross, you’re probably going to want to look at the recent years’ Nationals results and look at the top cars in various classes - https://www.scca.com/pages/solo-archives

If it can be a bit more general/track focused, get an ‘08-’13 Corvette Grand Sport. The LS3 is…

Doesn’t IMSA’s Porsche GT3 and some other series also usually race with them that weekend? Or did you mean something else by standalone that I’m missing?

You can already do that for a few hundred bucks... just like almost every other major and minor racetrack in the US.

Or am I missing the point somehow?

Oh well jeez how can anything you post be trusted then lol. Good call on the base though, yeah that’ll be quite a few inches vs. the relatively normal steelie/tires on the base.

The relative bloat on first vs last MINIs are wild too, yeah.

How it’s all used and the design proportions make up for a lot of it

To be fair, this isn’t a perfect side by side so there’s a touch of perspective play going on here, but even so it’s not substantially so in my mind.

Ok but posting a non-production photo for the production example is being a bit disingenuous, my dude. 

Random, but ever since we interacted on that Bubba Wallace article a few weeks ago I keep seeing your comments more now and you’re consistently one my favorite commenters for gold just like this one. 

This is an excellent point that I didn’t even think of. I remember stumbling upon a disc golfing broadcast one time and surprisingly couldn’t look away. 

It’s not racing, it’s stick and ball sports, at least in the US. Nissan has pulled out of basically every high level motorsport in the US, didn’t renew its official vehicle status with VIR... I can’t think of any other exits at this point but I think that’s because they haven’t been involved much at all the past 5…