Can ingenuity, hard work and some horse trading beat out simply plopping down the Benjamins?
This fall’s $2000 Challenge provided the platform to answer that question. For the first time in the event’s 20-plus-year history, it pitted two types of cars against each other: ones built to our traditional $2000 price cap and ones built without any budget constraints.
The open end of the competition attracted many hi-po favorites: Corvettes, Porsches, a Viper and even a Tesla. Then add in a slew of Miatas, Civics and BMW 3 Series.
On the budget-conscious side, entries included a tricked-out Subaru microcar, a Nash Metropolitan, a couple of pickup trucks and, yes, more Mazda Miatas and BMWs–including a Miata powered by BMW.
When you view the competition solely based on the entry list of cars, it doesn’t seem like a fair fight. However, hardcore GRMers know that those in the pricy cars should take their penny-pinching competition seriously.
In both autocross and the drags, the over-budget cars did win overall.
But that’s only part of the story.
On the autocross course, a low-buck yet radically reimagined Subaru kei car ran a time that was within a tenth of the Tesla. Down the drag strip, a trio of high school girls finished third in an ex-cop car.
Sure, the over-budget cars may have won overall, but the $2000 Challenge cars gave them a run for their money. For a more detailed look at what these low-budget warriors drove, read on.
1st: Nocones Garage, 1968 Subaru LMP360
Class: GTN$
Autocross Time: 46.193 sec.
Drag E.T.: 14.477 sec.
Concours Score: 22.00 pts.
Budget Spent: $1973.62
Dan Cummings turned a discarded Subaru microcar–offered via the GRM forum–into his take on a modern prototype racer, complete with functioning aero. Photography Credit: Chris Tropea
Did Subaru ever wonder if one of its kei cars would become a low-budget prototype racer? You’d need a fairly wild imagination to think so–and Dan Cummings has one.
This year he worked to take advantage of a readily available, no-cost performance enhancer: air. This included adding rear diffusers, a multi-element rear wing, a flat underbody, a front wing element and a long center fin. Most of those parts were built out of materials you can find at your local home improvement store: insulation, plywood and picket…
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