The only cars I’ve seen that you can drive from
The showroom to the track for serious use out of the box are in the realm of Porsche GTx cars, Nissan GTR, Corvette, Lotus, and boutique track cars (Caterham, Ariel, etc). Basically you’re Looking at $70k+ for someone to track prep a car for you and personally I can’t justify spending that kind of money (along with the parts “tax” that comes with them).
While you can technically take anything to the track, and some up-trimmed cars come close (Civic, ND Miata etc) anything else has at least a few compromises to for the street that need to be ironed out, and honestly I enjoy making the modifications almost as much as driving the car.
I will say that going back to cars made pre-2010 makes for fewer headaches of the software type - Modern cars being so computerized makes everything more complicated and no software is ever free of bugs.
The GRC looks pretty amazing with a lot of potential, I hope they fix the bugs. The way things are going, there will probably be a “facelift” and special edition, but carmakers are really going for the last hurrah of gas-burning cars. I seriously doubt we’ll see carmakers spend to develop a new generation of most cars that makes it to the US before everything is electric or at least hybridized. California is such a huge market not just for cars in general but on top of that, places like CA, NY, etc also account for a disproportionately higher fraction of the much smaller market for high end vehicle
trims (GR, STI, type R, BMW-M, etc etc) than the overall vehicle sales would suggest, so the emissions and EV pressure are going to have a heavy impact on performance oriented cars especially on the bigger mass market brands come 2035. (The EV/hybrid mandate is already at 35% of new sales)
What we’re likely to see is high performance hybrids coming out of the smaller car companies, which will still be allowed to sell plug in hybrids in California, at least for a while, but unless it’s a new trim/model that debuts in the next few years, it’s not likely to be sold in the US (maybe elsewhere in the world)
The showroom to the track for serious use out of the box are in the realm of Porsche GTx cars, Nissan GTR, Corvette, Lotus, and boutique track cars (Caterham, Ariel, etc). Basically you’re Looking at $70k+ for someone to track prep a car for you and personally I can’t justify spending that kind of money (along with the parts “tax” that comes with them).
While you can technically take anything to the track, and some up-trimmed cars come close (Civic, ND Miata etc) anything else has at least a few compromises to for the street that need to be ironed out, and honestly I enjoy making the modifications almost as much as driving the car.
I will say that going back to cars made pre-2010 makes for fewer headaches of the software type - Modern cars being so computerized makes everything more complicated and no software is ever free of bugs.
The GRC looks pretty amazing with a lot of potential, I hope they fix the bugs. The way things are going, there will probably be a “facelift” and special edition, but carmakers are really going for the last hurrah of gas-burning cars. I seriously doubt we’ll see carmakers spend to develop a new generation of most cars that makes it to the US before everything is electric or at least hybridized. California is such a huge market not just for cars in general but on top of that, places like CA, NY, etc also account for a disproportionately higher fraction of the much smaller market for high end vehicle
trims (GR, STI, type R, BMW-M, etc etc) than the overall vehicle sales would suggest, so the emissions and EV pressure are going to have a heavy impact on performance oriented cars especially on the bigger mass market brands come 2035. (The EV/hybrid mandate is already at 35% of new sales)
What we’re likely to see is high performance hybrids coming out of the smaller car companies, which will still be allowed to sell plug in hybrids in California, at least for a while, but unless it’s a new trim/model that debuts in the next few years, it’s not likely to be sold in the US (maybe elsewhere in the world)
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