Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike Mans
I know this has to be a generational thing, because I've heard the impressive story numerous times about how Ben Wenzel bought his 1967 Z-28 Camaro new, brought it to the racetrack and won the US Nationals with it in 1967.
So many of you want a new class for all of the new factory race cars, well - how about NHRA just creates a class for you instead. Nostalgia Stock. Otherwise, get back to work on your car not your keyboard.
Mike Mans
*** This post was not meant to insult or criticize anyone with older generation cars, I truly am a fan of them and appreciate old school muscle and performance.
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Interesting parallel or comparison you attempt to draw there. But in 1967, you could go to the dealership and buy a new 1967 Z-28 Camaro and DRIVE it home. It had a VIN, emissions equipment, safety equipment, and there were
602 built. It was a regular production option, available to the general public, to drive on the street. The 302 was just a throw together piece Vince Piggins came up with to make the Camaro legal in SCCA Trans Am racing, it didn't even have a thing to do with drag racing. The car was not even a purpose built race car, drag race or not.
If we could get our car as fast as the fastest ones like it in the country, cars that have been thrashed for 30 years, it still wouldn't come close to the purpose built race cars. Care to tell us what we should do to it? We can't just go buy a different set of ported heads or a cam with more lift, or another intake, or the latest trick carburetor. So by all means tell us what we should do to our cars when we get back to the shop tomorrow.
For decades, the rules for Stock Eliminator were specifically written so that purpose built race cars were not legal. All sorts of cars were excluded, because they were not factory built production cars sold in quantity to the general public. For an easy and well known example, you can't race a 67 L-88 Corvette in Stock, because there were only 36 built and sold to the general public (word is there were others sold through back door channels to racers). But you can now race a car that was NEVER sold to the general public, never passed emissions, never had safety equipment, never had a VIN, and in fact couldn't even be driven away from the dealer.
The most basic rule for Stock Eliminator has completely changed. It changes the basic character of the class.
The thing is, this thing with the new cars isn't like anything in the past. People keep trying to act like it is, but it isn't. Because cars like this have never been legal for Stock. It doesn't matter how many times people try to say it is just like past history, it doesn't make it so.
And now, yet another person who never has to face one of these cars heads up feels compelled to come in and tell us all how we should all just smile and "take one for the team", and feel privileged to "do it for the good of the class".
And we keep hearing how good this is supposed to be for the sport. But I can't see how it's a good business model. I have yet to see a business just decide to mistreat its current customers in order to draw new customers, and be successful. It doesn't make sense. If you look at business, it generally costs about 2-3 times as much to gain a new customer as it does to keep an old customer. So I just can't see how telling a big percentage of long time customers to take a screwing and like it in order to draw a small number of new customers is a solid long term business model.
Another thing about those "new customers". If the only way to get those "new customers" is to give them some sort of ridiculous advantage over the current customers, how long will the "new customers" stay when someone else is given the same thing, and the "new customers" advantage is gone?
I don't have anything against the people who bought the new cars, it isn't their fault. NHRA opened up the rulebook and changed it, they didn't. They just took advantage of an opportunity they were given by NHRA.
NHRA has created a whole new precedent here. I wonder how happy people will be when NHRA decides to make another wholesale change that has a less than enjoyable effect on them. I wonder if it will still be so wonderful if a year or two from now NHRA decides to make these expensive new cars obsolete by letting in another ringer or two.