Werkstatt

Yeah Chris, Tim and I do a good job of fishing the internet, not much slips by us from Atlanta to Boston. I just pulled another Boxster donor car out of your area today for under $8000. If anyone is looking give us a call, we'll buy stuff that is inexpensive and store it, I asked Tim today, we have 4-6 engines in the shop now and 3 are his, we've lost track of what is good, bad 2.5 or 2.7?

v-tach

remember there is both sp1 or sp2 !
20k ?? maybe i could count on 1 hand if im lucky !

amondc

Damn peole think we are crazy because we have 6 cars, 3 spare motors, 2 trans, 70 wheels, not to mention spares to a complete car laying around...

Motors are cheap, even new from P we have bought 3 and not paid more then 8k. Add an accusump and change the oil and they are bullet proof.(Atleast so far...knocks on wood)

Larry Herman

Mooty, I appreciate the feedback; that is why I threw my opinion out there. I am trying to get a real world assessment of reliability and cost. So far, I have not seen a Boxster for under 8K that didn't require enough repair work to bring it up to that number to become suitable to build on. And the general consensus here is that to buy or build a quality car will cost around $35k~$40k.

I was just working on my friends GT3 tonight and I forgot about how much I really liked mine, and how well-built they are. Right now they can be had for $45k at auction, and for another $8k can be completely fitted with all of the safety gear for PCA racing. I keep thinking that I could pound around in that for a year or so and then redo the suspension if I couldn't get it to podium as is. Makes the decision to go spec Boxster that much harder.

mooty

LOL, we share similar thoughts.
1. yes, 35-40 if not more, is the $$$ needed for a good car.
2. 6gt3 is getting pretty cheap to and i am tempted to get yet another one. but unlike the rest of the country, there are almost NO prepared or stock classes here. they are all out race cars. and there's no class for GT3 street cars other than GTA. and there you are way outclassed by the big guns.... if PCA would only put 6gt3 in an appropriate GT class............ anyone listening?

fc-racer

Thanks for the great insight guys, really appreciate it! From all the posts on the GT3 forum, I thought the spec boxsters were similar to spec miata in running costs, but as Mooty says, it's all relative to cup cars, not regular race cars I'd better really think this through before committing to SB... Thanks again!

C.J. Ichiban

mooty I know what you mean- it seems like the only options in CA are to go all out cup style or bsr. For enduros I'd rather just slug it out with all the psychos in scca/nasa in my mazda cup car...but the tires/suspension are more expensive than the BSR

btw anyone interested in a low mile and lightly driven/ great condition/ pretty white SPBOX let me know- am not able to race/drive it enough and have been doing open wheel stuff instead.

Chris M.

The big difference here is the tires and brakes, no? A set of Hoosiers every race weekend for the GT3 vs a set of RA-1s for the Boxster every what, 3 or 4 weekends? I'd also have to assume that pads and rotors for a GT3 are quite a bit more expensive than those for the Boxster.

FredC

This very interesting thread kind of cemented my view that racing a spec box car is really only "cheaper" than racing cup cars and the more sophisticated GT cars (in pca that is). Perhaps the marginal savings in tires make it more economical than racing in stock?

Paul 996

The way I summarize Spec Boxster is...

cup car handling (considering your tires) without the acceleration. Running costs are tied to the consumables for any race car platform. However, the spares package for a boxster is much more reasonable than Cup.

The consideration of Spec is that you are not necessarily racing with your wallet once your car is up to standard. It is well documented what components you need to have to be up to standard, the rest is setup and driver.

John H

+1 I have done the GT class gig and quite frankly, the thought of zinging another $30K motor made my stomach churn. The idea behind spec is to keep the initial build cost down, i.e. PSS-9/10 instead of Motons, Penskes or whatever. After you get it up and going, it should be about the same as any other stock class car to maintain and operate. Point being, I don't think you can build a stock class car that will make the top of the podium for less dollars than a top of the podium capable specBoxster.

M758

20k what heck are you smoking. BTW my home rebuild motor in my 944 spec ran the fastest lap of the weeked at NASA nationals this year and lead 1/2 the championship race. Small driver mistakes pushed me to 4th out of 34, but at least I was only 2.5 seconds back after 40 mintues of green racing.

The 2009 championship winning car is for sale for 12k or so. Fair price.


The idea of any spec class (944 or boxster) is two fold.

1) Cost containment - Rules are developed to limit build costs for a competitive build to a range. Sure you can spend 3k on seat or 5k on paint. However those don't make the car any faster. It may make the car prettier or more "comfortable", but that is not going to win races. As such you can look at the rules and without that much effort determine what parts you need to be fast and get a reasonable estimate of costs. It may not always be cheap, but costs are contained. GT3 cups are spec cars with cost containment. However they are much more expensive. Still cheaper than running other full bodied cars of that performance range.

2) Performance equality - Rules are designed to make sure there is no (or very little) techincal advantage in a particular car or from any particular shop. Cars when driven on track should very close in terms of hp, straightaway speed, cornering performance and braking. What is intended to seperate the cars on track is drive skill not the ability to buy faster parts.


So the allure of any spec class is racing to limited budget and the belief that you can compete in nicely prepared car.

If spec boxster is too expensive there are cheaper classes. 944-spec and spec miata are just two of these. However these cars are also slower. Does that make a difference? You decide.

gums

One other thought here, although we all know that there is no escaping the ages-old axiom that speed is directly proportional to money, classes like Spec Miata are definitely cheap, but they're not very fast either, and few of us would be happy there. But, I can tell you that I run my 944S2 in 944SuperCup for about half the outlay of SpecBox and yet am consistently faster. They're just not worth it yet, IMHO.

Astroman

Interesting point. I can't say I'd be very interested in being slower than I already am....

Larry Herman

low mile, great condition & cheap?