Pure Stock Thread - Foreign Makes

[Dan Fahey]

I want to address is to start adding Forign Makes to Pure Stock.

There is a lot of resistance to this but want to provoke a conversation.

Especially since many Foreign makes are now being made with American Muscle, Blood Sweat and Tears..

My objective is to double the amount of cars participating in IHRA.
Do what NHRA refuses to do since they have more money.

Pure Stock would be a great segue to test the interest of the other half of the racing community..the YOUNG BUCKS who tend to like foreign makes.

FWIW I started like many as a young guy and we just stuck with it.
But not a lot of new young guys followed.

But there are millions of new young kids to attract with Foreign makes.
AND intersted in seeing European and Asian vehicles competing.

TO me as a successful business person

It is good common sense business.

I bet ONE DOLLAR to anyone who want to bet.
IF you let Foreign makes in THEY WILL COME !!

and will come in droves..well at least more than a few

Seeking feedback !

Dan

[Ken Kopecky]

I'm not sure that they will come. A few years ago, NHRA introduced the Sport Compact series to pull in the import cars. The series only lasted a very short time and then faded out and finally dissappeared.

Ken Kopecky
1454 E/SA

[James Perrone]

No thanks..JUNK EM ALL

[Dan Fahey]

Originally Posted by Ken Kopecky

I'm not sure that they will come. A few years ago, NHRA introduced the Sport Compact series to pull in the import cars. The series only lasted a very short time and then faded out and finally dissappeared.

Ken Kopecky
1454 E/SA

But you have to bring in the young generation that has some spending cash.
Not mega racing dollars.

Attract the kids.
Eventually about 80% will eventually fall out.
Kids, Jobs, school, stuff.
But you capture that other 20% that stays.

Dan

As a fellow Pure Stock'er Dan my personal opinion initially is that I don't have any use for them. They are of no interest to me BUT there is a large sport compact and import crowd doing a lot of amazing things with their cars. Whether or not you like their platform you have to respect the results. I do have a couple other points though for ponder ...

1. As I look at the "Live from ..." pictures posted from folks attending events (which I love to see!) look at the average age of many of the Stock and Super Stock racers. I'd be curious to know the median age at any given event. I promise you it's hovering somewhere close to 50. Not that these folks won't race for a long time but "young people" don't seem to be attracted to class racing unless their parents got them going in it. I fear that if new blood doesn't come in one day it will be dead. Heck, look at the numbers now at events as compared to 10, 20 ... 30 years ago. You can't argue that it's not declining and although the economy may be to blame some racers are retiring and not being replaced.

2. The old cars are becoming harder to come by and how many 20-year olds can afford a DP, COPO, CJ, etc.? The imports and sport compacts are very affordable and of interest to those people. I'm sure every generation of racer and gearhead may not agree with what the next does with the cars that are available to them but if they are modding, learning, building, ... racing what does it matter?

And finally for a "what it's worth" ... and please don't kill me for this ...we recently pulled the transmission, differential, and entire rear suspension from our CORVETTE and EVERY bolt was metric and I noticed on more than one part a stamping where it was made outside of the USA. I thought about that more than once while I worked on it ...

[Jeff Kempton]

Dan, I understand where you're coming from but in my opinion it's not feasible for the following reasons:

1. IHRA depends heavily on the NHRA Class Guide to police their Stock and Super Stock classes (including Pure Stock). This Guide took a lot of work over many years with the cooperation of the domestic manufacturers to reach it's current level of completeness. I can't picture IHRA having either the interest or resources to develop a Class Guide for the multitude of foreign combos to make it feasible, even if they somehow got the foreign manufacturers to provide the factory specs for inclusion.

2. While it's true that the majority of young people are into foreign cars, I haven't seen very many of those cars that are stock. The way they seem to prefer to build them would not create cars legal for Pure Stock.

3. The tuner crowd seems uninterested in racing in classes with a bunch of rules and restrictions. That is what Stock and Super Stock is all about.

I realize that the above comments are generalizations and that not everyone is like that, but I think a majority of them are, and that would pose a significant roadblock to your idea. My 2 cents.

[Terry Cain]

Originally Posted by Dan Fahey

But you have to bring in the young generation that has some spending cash.
Not mega racing dollars.

Attract the kids.
Eventually about 80% will eventually fall out.
Kids, Jobs, school, stuff.
But you capture that other 20% that stays.

Dan

Local track has a test and tune on Friday nights. Average Friday car count is close to 200. Most are kids with RICE rockets. They have fun but, I'm not sure many would want to follow the rules that close. They like to put turbo's and NOS to them.

Originally Posted by Jeff Kempton

Dan, I understand where you're coming from but in my opinion it's not feasible for the following reasons:

1. IHRA depends heavily on the NHRA Class Guide to police their Stock and Super Stock classes (including Pure Stock). This Guide took a lot of work over many years with the cooperation of the domestic manufacturers to reach it's current level of completeness. I can't picture IHRA having either the interest or resources to develop a Class Guide for the multitude of foreign combos to make it feasible, even if they somehow got the foreign manufacturers to provide the factory specs for inclusion.

I never thought about the classification guide; good point! I don't know that IHRA even has the man-power to address this issue which would have to happen before they could race. Putting together one of those would have to be overwhelming and unbelievably time consuming.

[ALMACK]

Originally Posted by Terry Cain

Local track has a test and tune on Friday nights. Average Friday car count is close to 200. Most are kids with RICE rockets. They have fun but, I'm not sure many would want to follow the rules that close. They like to put turbo's and NOS to them.

^^ So true.

Very few (if any) young kids want to spend money on a class car with tightly restricted rules
.
It's easier to just add their NAWWWWZZZZ........ LOL

[Jack Matyas]

Originally Posted by Ken Kopecky

I'm not sure that they will come. A few years ago, NHRA introduced the Sport Compact series to pull in the import cars. The series only lasted a very short time and then faded out and finally dissappeared.

Ken Kopecky
1454 E/SA

OK- I'll jump in ......I agree with Kenny - it's been tried and failed to produce results .That and the fart can muffler era is long over ...............