I am with you on this. I bought my 1st Porsche in 2000 and then bought another in 2001 and never new or heard about DE's or my local PCA club. I bought another Porsche in 2006 and never was told about PCA or DE's at my dealership.

I found out about PCA and DE's right here in this forum on Rennlist. My wife and I took a ride out to see a DE at Sebring ran into Tom Kerr (the great DE pimp) and I signed up for the next DE.

My only issue with DE's is that registration is 3-4+ months before the event. With my job and work travel schedule it is hard to impossible for me to know what I will be doing and if I will be in town to attend a DE 3-4+ months down the road. This is especially true during these economic times where I am make much less money and have to travel and work much more than I use to.

So for now I can not participate in DE's until any of the above things change. It really SUCKS!

 

work always gets in the way.

 

I always stress when budgeting an event. Most things need to be ordered well in advance of when registration even opens. Hill Country Region's Oct. DE was shy some drivers but we still put on a show as best we could. I'm fully expecting our March race to either bring the same or less than last year. All races are down I'm told. So to compensate I'm actually introducing even more events to be run simultaneously. Concours, wine tasting (evening), Time Trials, etc. That and I may have to make cuts in other areas as much as I don't want to.

Chris Alvarado
Hill Country Region, Club Race Chair

 

Track activities, be it DE or Racing, ARE going to be negatively impacted in '09. And so are ancillary businesses such as parts suppliers and track support shops. Be this depressing or not, it's a foregone conclusion.

Here's a short litany of events that we're dealing with:

1) This is not your average economic downturn or recession. It's likely far severe than even the most gloomy forecasts suggest. Only sometime in the future...whenever that maybe will we know the extent of pain caused.

2) What we're experiencing is the most dramatic "deleveraging", or contraction of credit, that any living being has ever witnessed. Turn the clock back 30 plus years, if those of you are old enough to remember, and that's likely to be the 'new' economic and consumer spending model. Have cash, then spend. The days of home equity extraction (what equity) and 'just charge it' are gone.

3) With the rapid 'deleveraging' the real economy, read Main street, has taken a sharp dive. Every industry, business and consumer segment is heavily impacted. Wall street has been getting toasted as all can see but just look around...the 'big three' and Detroit are bust, most retailers (current exception Walmart) are or will be losing money, housing..you know the story, services and IT retrenching. Yes, and even debt collectors and law firms are having problems.

4) And this recession, or whatever you wish to call it, is Global. There is no place to hide. To put this in perspective, a year ago the combined market value of all global equities was ~ $63 trillion. Today it's ~ $28 trillion. I.e., $35 trillion of wealth just went poof!

5) Bottom line: more job losses, more credit contraction, and more economic activity contraction = less consumer spending power and spending. If it hasn't yet impacted your business, company or industry segment so far...rest uneasy as it's coming.

Going to the track is recreation. And an expensive recreation habit at that. Something's gotta give.

The flame throwers will likely label this 'depressing', 'Mr doom & gloom", yada, yada, yada. I call it realism and facing upto factual outcomes as they unfold.

On the brighter side this mess also produces once-in-a-lifetime economic opportunities. Look ahead but be prudent with personal financial decisions. And strap yourselves in for a wild ride.

Cheers!

 

Jeez Mr. Doom & Gloom, that was depressing.

 

Bobby, I'm afraid you are right. This has good potential to get depression ugly.

 

Tucker - I've been eyeing that beautiful car of yours. Hope I have a few dollars to spare for next season...

 

I wish I could poke a hole in your analysis. What baffles me is why the market is taking so long to internalize these obvious facts. I told my advisor that I'm expecting the Dow to be at 6,000 by the close of '08. Like you said, wealth has just vanished. Maybe it wasn't real, but it sure seemed real!

 

Two reasons. First, I'm afraid Bobby is right, and nobody is elastic enough in this environment, even medicine. people just don't have the extra cash anymore.
DE/track/racing are the definitions of discretionary spending. You will see a sharp drop off, esp at the country club tracks.
Secondly, there has been a slow change in the character of DEs, a PCA DE used to be about 90% street cars. Now, it's about 50-50. With insurance companies NOT covering DEs at all, it's tough to take your 100k street car out with a bunch of 'track cars' (moreso at PDA style events with some real POS, rather than PCA) where the owner doesn't mind balling up at a DE. This will be magnified by 100X with this economy.
Just a couple of things that come to mind.
c

 

You are so correct especially about DE's now becoming 50/50 street and race cars. Actually I have been seeing more cars trailered to events than driven! I have only been into DE's since mid 2006 but I see DE's with Chin and PCA now more of a test time for race cars and race drivers. It is kind of spooky but cool being passed in a corner by a ALMS car during a Chin event but then you start to think about what just happened and it is scary!

On another note I have the Daytona Audi event form sitting on my desk with the one day HPDE Insurance company ph number. I really really wan to be a part of this event but I just can not find the $2000 it would cost me.

I hate to say or even think this but I think I need to find another hobby!

 

mdrums -- sounds like you are in need of self-insurance. We signed up for the HPDE insurance - and it was a whole $79 bucks. We have a car - that we can literally walk away from, but gives us a lot of pleasure around the track. I think you'll find there are many of us at DEs - we've bought a cheap car on ebay and fixed it up to be track worthy - and drive...

I think I'd be terrified to take out a car that has a 2000 buck policy for one weekend.

It's not another hobby you need - just a cheaper way of doing it!!!

 

Well, if it costs $2k to run an event, try it a different way... Keep your car as stock as possible and avoid the upgrades and switch to an insurance carrier that does not exclude DE. That should knock the cost down to about $250 including gas (our chapter events are $195 for a 1-day and about $350 for a 2-day). I'd much rather see people scale back than stop altogether. I agree, there's been a ramping-up of hardware with some people showing up in a $100-150k race prepared car being towed by a $100k tow vehicle. Alternatively, a street car with a few track-oriented adjustments (pads, fluid, DOT tires, alignment) can be extremely potent and fun at the track. A $20k 964 with $5k invested is a great track / street combo.

 

RonCT that is pretty much what I have been doing in the past just tires, pads and fluid.

DarkSide, I'd love to be able to find and afford a track car I could drive. However I can't just go out there and by any cheap car because most have a manual tranny and I do not have a left leg to push a clutch in. That is why I have been in a Tiptronic car and now a new 09 with the PDK. I thought about finding an old early 90's Vette or BMW with an automatic but there is no way to control what gear you are in.
On top of all that trying to fit my 6'5" frame into a small sports car to be comfortable to drive safely on the track is another can of worms.

Also the insurance is not $2000 for an event it is $500 for the insurance for the weekend event, $999 for the upcoming Daytona reg fee's, $199 for a garage, $120 for the hotel, $300 or so in fuel, $100 in food, and then you have cost of brake pads and so forth. A Sebring event with PCA for the weekend cost's me around $1000. I drive for free with Chin because I am an instructor but the weekend still costs around $700 due to track insurance and so forth. Not bad for the fun involved!

 

mdrums - you sound like you are having a blast no matter what. One suggestion though - if you are doing more than 6 DEs a year - you might want to look into an insurance policy that will cover multiple events all year round. The person who does 1 to 6 DEs benefits from the weekend policy - you might do better and reduce costs that way. Just a thought.

P.S. Stay out of Morgans too....

 

Everyone I know who has looked at the total cost of participating in a track event with PCA or similar clubs has found the event cost to be somewhere around $1,000. That includes entry fees, fuel for tow vehicle and on track, lodging, tires, brake pads, etc. It can easily total more that that, but it is difficult to get it to be less (sleep in vehicle, etc.).