Pure Stock Thread - Foreign Makes

04-23-2013, 01:05 PM

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 ...

04-23-2013, 01:05 PM	#4
Tar Heel Guest Posts: n/a	Re: Pure Stock Thread - Foreign Makes 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 ...