The new Dodge Dart ? not what BS

[Alan Roehrich]

New cars are absurdly expensive, all of them are. No new racer is likely to spend that kind of money. Not even to buy a salvage car, rebuild it to a race car, and race it.

The rules of Stock Eliminator and Super Stock do not appeal to the majority of racers, especially not the majority of new racers. They like bolting on big superchargers, or swapping in crate motors or stroker motors, bolting on ported heads and intakes, installing huge cams, or adding nitrous, and going really fast. You are never going to get those people to race class cars. They're not coming. Forget it, stop worrying about it, stop trying to drag them in, they're not coming. We have rules, and they hate rules.

At some point, people need to grasp reality. Stock Eliminator and Super Stock are very limited and narrowly defined classes that appeal strictly to a select and small group of racers of a very specific type. You will never liberalize the rules of Stock Eliminator and Super Stock to draw even a small segment of "the masses". All you will ever accomplish is the complete destruction of Stock Eliminator and Super Stock. You cannot "save" Stock Eliminator and Super Stock by screwing around with the rules to loosen them to allow more modifications and allow more cars. All you will ever accomplish is driving off the core competitors, and forever changing the classes until they no longer even remotely resemble what they actually are, or rather, were.

It does not matter what "new" car you let in. It doesn't matter if you let in a Testarossa and a Toyota. You will never get all those people you think you are going to attract to race class cars. They don't like class racing. We have rules, and they hate rules.

If you want to "save" Stock Eliminator and Super Stock, the first thing to do is stop screwing with the rules and liberalizing them to allow more expensive parts and modifications, as well as bogus combinations. The next thing to do is start making it more fun and more affordable. It probably cannot be done with NHRA in charge. But that is the only way to really save the classes.