Cheap Track Day Car

savagesam117

savagesam117

savagesam117

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I'm fairly sure there was a thread on this but I can't find it and my iPad is being a PITA.

Soo.. My friend wants a cheap track day car and this is his criteria, "I want to drive it to the track, rag it around and then drive it home". I done this in the Golf and it was so much fun I've booked a couple more, I can see why he wants to do it.

He's got about 2k to play with, to get him started.. He told me he's been looking at (without paying too much attention to budget, just looking at cars, their reliability etc): Civic Type R's, Clio's etc etc.. Hot hatch's from what I can gather.

So what would you recommend in terms of, something nippy, parts easy/relatively cheap to replace and get hold of, and all the other relevant things.

I haven't got a clue when it comes to what's worth spending money on and what's going to last on track.

Thanks guys :D
 
Puma? £1.5k max for a decent one, reasonable ones for as cheap as half that, leaves room for some decent tyres and a few choice budget upgrades?
 
I would say that one of the hottest contenders should be an early Clio 172. Might be able to get one for under £1K, which will leave some spare pennies to make sure everything's working as it should and get a spare set of wheels with track day tyres on, put in some uprated pads and put some high temperature brake fluid in it.

Last track day I did at Donnington there was a guy there who did exactly that. He'd bought it for £600 and got a spare set of wheels with track day tyres on.
 
I said a Clio would be right up there! :p

Excuse me here, which is the 200bhp one? 182 16v? I had one of those in the golf, I wasn't expecting it to as quick as it was that's for sure.

He likes the MX5's as they are rear wheel drive. They must be relatively reliable as they are bloody everywhere!

He doesn't want to trailer at all, that was his main thing.
 
savagesam117 said:
I said a Clio would be right up there! :p

Excuse me here, which is the 200bhp one? 182 16v? I had one of those in the golf, I wasn't expecting it to as quick as it was that's for sure.

He likes the MX5's as they are rear wheel drive. They must be relatively reliable as they are bloody everywhere!

He doesn't want to trailer at all, that was his main thing.
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172 is...wait for it, 172hp, and the 182 is, unsurprisingly, 182hp!

the 200hp version is the latest one, but that's a turbo 1.6L, where the 172 & 182 are NA 2L engines (really great engines if you ask me), but they do need to have the dephaser done at around 60K I think which I think it's a ~£600 job.

The MOST important thing for a track day car is tyres, and the second most important is brakes. If he can get a car inside his budget that leaves him room to do both of those things they he'll have a great fun toy!
 
What driving characteristics does he want from the car? Big power? Tail happy? Something to build on and modify?
 
savagesam117 said:
He likes the MX5's as they are rear wheel drive. They must be relatively reliable as they are bloody everywhere!
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I'm biased but they tick a lot of boxes.

Cheap to buy
Cheap to run
Lightweight
Great handling out of the box
RWD
Cheap parts
Very easy to work on
Very reliable
Engine is FI ready

Downsides are:

Rot
Image
 
I think the MX5 is a great place to start though as it's RWD and has lots of options to make it very good on track. They lack power, so on somewhere like Silverstone you can eat a pie between the corners, but in those corners you can nail the arse end of supercars and know that if they collect you your bill with be 27p and theirs 300k.
 
Havana_UK said:
The MOST important thing for a track day car is tyres, and the second most important is brakes. If he can get a car inside his budget that leaves him room to do both of those things they he'll have a great fun toy!
Click to expand...

I'd say that, for trackdays, tyres aren't especially important. For competition then tyres are everything because you want to go as quick as possible. Trackdays are more about having fun than outright speed and you can do that on **** tyres as long as they're not dangerous.

Brakes though are the most important. There's nothing that will ruin your fun more than brakes which turn to mush after a couple of laps.
 
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