Contemplating a track car - kit or mainstream?
Discussion
I'm thinking of getting something a bit more track orientated in the future and, before setting my sights on a certain well known Japanese roadster I thought I'd pause to consider the kit offerings.
Okay, let's get one thing straight, I appreciate a well setup 500kg kit car is going to muller most things for performance and driving pleasure.
There are two reasons that I think will point me to something mainstream though:
Firstly I'm hugely lazy. I like the idea of phoning up MX5 Parts or GTI Mania (okay, I made the second one up) and getting anything from an indicator stalk to a 300bhp turbo conversion. Are there any driver-focused kits which offer a modern, widely supported single donor. I'm a little worried I could have to spend ages scanning eBay for bits from a multitude of different cars when something goes wrong? Getting 1970s Fiat and Vauxhall bits for the Leader, for example, was an experience I don't want to go through again.
Secondly, despite the track aspirations I'd like to use it for a short commute occasionally and I'm concerned that an open Seven-type car would be used as a latrine by the local chavs and anything more secure, but still obviously different, would get vandalised? Something like an MX5, for all its blandness, blends perfectly into the background of suburban North London.
Okay, let's get one thing straight, I appreciate a well setup 500kg kit car is going to muller most things for performance and driving pleasure.
There are two reasons that I think will point me to something mainstream though:
Firstly I'm hugely lazy. I like the idea of phoning up MX5 Parts or GTI Mania (okay, I made the second one up) and getting anything from an indicator stalk to a 300bhp turbo conversion. Are there any driver-focused kits which offer a modern, widely supported single donor. I'm a little worried I could have to spend ages scanning eBay for bits from a multitude of different cars when something goes wrong? Getting 1970s Fiat and Vauxhall bits for the Leader, for example, was an experience I don't want to go through again.
Secondly, despite the track aspirations I'd like to use it for a short commute occasionally and I'm concerned that an open Seven-type car would be used as a latrine by the local chavs and anything more secure, but still obviously different, would get vandalised? Something like an MX5, for all its blandness, blends perfectly into the background of suburban North London.
MKnight702 said:
What about the Westfield SDV? A Westfield usig an MX5 as a donor, all the weight saving chuckable fun coupled with single source parts.
Or any Westfield really as they have their own parts department to sell you whatever you need.
Doesn't solve the concerns about usability for commuting though?Or any Westfield really as they have their own parts department to sell you whatever you need.
And parts supply is fine for current models, but they're not always so good for older models. If you've got an FW400, you need to speak to me now, as I bought up all remaining factory spares (not that there was much left!).
Sam_68 said:
Doesn't solve the concerns about usability for commuting though?
And parts supply is fine for current models, but they're not always so good for older models. If you've got an FW400, you need to speak to me now, as I bought up all remaining factory spares (not that there was much left!).
How far are we talking about for commuting, I did a daily 40 mile round trip in my SE for 2 years plus several long trips (Scotland and Luxembourg). I clocked up over 38,000 miles in 3 years and enjoyed pretty much all of them.And parts supply is fine for current models, but they're not always so good for older models. If you've got an FW400, you need to speak to me now, as I bought up all remaining factory spares (not that there was much left!).
As for spares IIRC the FW400 was somewhat of a low volume niche Westfield so I'm not too surprised that you struggled to get any spare parts! The more common SE/SEi and SDV should have a somewhat better spares availability, plus the bulk of the mechanical stuff is pure vanilla MX5 and parts availability for that is not a problem.
Vindi_andy said:
As asked before whats the budget
there is obviously the Murtaya which is based on the Subaru mechanicals and would be extremely chuckable but is rather pricey
Oh I'm very familiar with the Murtaya and a big fan of it, but if a secondhand car were to come up (and I don't think any have yet) it would probably be out of my budget. there is obviously the Murtaya which is based on the Subaru mechanicals and would be extremely chuckable but is rather pricey
Budget is pretty flexible really, don't think I could justify much over £10k though, but the idea (paradoxic as this may be for someone doing trackdays!) is to minimise the money that gets spent in parts, servicing and general running costs, even if it means spending a bit more on the car in the first place. Hopefully purchase price I can get back to a degree (although time and space means I'd probably have to go for a complete car secondhand), but I want to minimise expenditure on consumables.
I had the chance to take a Caterham superlight on track recently and it was absolutely sublime. I then blagged a ride in Zetec powered Westfield the following weekend and (from the passenger seat at least) it seemed to be every bit as good. So I do like the idea of a Seven, but as Sam said there's not really the option of comutting in it. Not unless I like sitting in a combination o rain water and tramp urine anyway, as I have to park on the street some distance from the office.
A Fury or Stylus did spring to mind as people would probably ignore it thinking - and I'll apologise to Sylva owners before I say this - that it was just another MX5 or Z3. But I've witnessed the, ahem, joy that my father has gone through building his and I'm a bit worried about finding and fitting bits for it. Plus, if I go for the ultimate act of laziness, I can even get someone else to work on a mainstream car, but I wouldn't trust the average garage with something unusual.
MKnight702 said:
As for spares IIRC the FW400 was somewhat of a low volume niche Westfield so I'm not too surprised that you struggled to get any spare parts! The more common SE/SEi and SDV should have a somewhat better spares availability, plus the bulk of the mechanical stuff is pure vanilla MX5 and parts availability for that is not a problem.
The FW400 comment was very much tongue-in-cheek. They built 6 of them, only 5 still exist (2 in Japan) and virtually every component was specific to the car and not shared by any other Westfield model, so yes, spares were always going to be tricky.But many Westfields - and this comment applies equally to most kit cars - are not built entirely from 'standard' components. As an example, my first Westfield had been built using the instrument panel from a Skoda 130. Another example; being lazy, I recently tried to get hold of a baffled wet sump pan for the Crossflow engine in my Sylva, as the original is leaking from a crack near the sump plug. Now both Westfield and Caterham have built thousands of Crossflow engined cars over the years, yet neither can supply me with a replacement sump pan. I've had to source a sump pan from a classic Ford specialist and shorten and baffle it myself.
Everything from wheels and wing mirrors to engines and gearboxes are regularly sourced by the builder and so lack any sort of standard specification. 10 years down the line, a badly kerbed alloy can mean having to purchase a full set of replacement wheels.
With a car like an MX5 or Lotus Elise, you can ring a specialist, quote the model and year of manufacture, and get pretty much any part delivered to your doorstep the next morning; the OP has a perfectly valid concern that any kit car - even the fairly standardised ones like Westfield and Caterham - can demand a lot more effort when the time comes that something needs replacing.
If you really want proper practicallity with your tracktoy, and parts availability then i would buy an Elise, full stop. I love the Libra and tracked mine often, but being kind to GTM, parts supply is embarrasing. MX5's are fantasctic, but unless it has nigh on 200bhp i personally would not want it to regularly track it. just not fast enough to excite, no matter how well it handles. If you want something a bit more hardcore with good parts availability, i would beat a path to Cyana Cars. They do a version of the Sylva Phoenix (I have an R1 powered version) which uses a MK1 MX5 single donor. You can be on the road for about £8K, and pretty simple to build. Then, with all MX5 running gear, you have mega spares availability. Supercharger? That will be £2.5K and 200bhp. 300+BHP per ton in a 600kg car. It looks like a proper sportscar, and will outhandle anything but something very trick indeed. As for vandalism, i have never ever had anyone vandalise one of my kits, and i have parked them in some dodgy places at times. Even the local hoodies have a bit of respect for them. Have fun deciding.
Furyblade_Lee said:
Sylva Phoenix... MK1 MX5 single donor.
Hmmm, now that does sound interesting.As mentioned above I'm very familiar with (and indeed co-building one of) the Fury/Stylus/Phoenix and I'm a big fan of the design.
I think the other option remains just strapping a supercharger onto the donor car. I was at Brands in an Elise 160 powered Caterham roadsports a week or so ago and there was a mk2 MX5 pulling away from me on the straights. Fairly sure that wasn't standard!
Edited by Chris71 on Wednesday 11th March 22:35
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