American 2 door RWD cars that could be a race car?
What are some ideas of RWD American built cars that are fairly affordable, of the 90s or early 00s, 2 doors, preferably not ford but will look into, and that could possibly be a street course race car? Not looking engine wise but a larger v6 or smaller v8 is preferred, since most American built cars are pushrods.
Mustang is probably your best choice here, plenty of 5.0L V8 mustangs out there. What I could also say about racing expenses, the bigger the car, you go through more brakes and tires and V8 power and weight will burn through more brakes and tires and cost more to run and maintain and that may mean you get fewer laps on the track if you are expense limited. If there were a rear wheel drive 4 cylinder in this era I would recommend it. In an earlier era in the 70s I saw plenty of Ford Pintos and Mercury Capris that would be great small RWD cars for showroom stock racing on a budget. The Dodge Neon was a good low budget starting showroom stock race car in the 90s era, but of course it is FWD. I do also need to put a plug in for Mazda Miata, it was designed in america and is nearly track ready as provided, 50/50 weight distribution, good handling little RWD car, and because it is well balanced it isn't going to go through as many brakes and tires on the track. If you want to race a Miata you need to get a hardtop, if you have a soft top SCCA rollbar requirements require the roll bar to be taller than the soft top will close over, plus top speed drops about 20mph with an open top. Ok, if you can find an '86 or '87 Pontiac Fiero V6 mid engine RWD; perhaps it is almost as good as a Miata but they are few and far between. Initially the Fiero was not very popular because it didn't do a good job at either economy or performance, and only the last year or two of production they were set up for decent performance… But I should also say if you get a V6 Fiero, they stuff it in pretty tight and the front 3 plugs are impossible to reach. And of course Corvette or Viper sounds like a cool idea but you won't find them cheap and are again fairly heavy V8 cars that will go through more expensive tires and brakes.
So anyway, whatever you are racing, just plan it so that you have an extra set of wheels with race tires, possibly 2 extra sets of wheels if you want to do a whole weekend track event, and keep extra brake pads on hand and know how to change them yourself. Figure decent sticky race tires are good for maybe 100 laps and brakes may not last much longer than that, and 5-6 hours of track time on a road race circuit will use up a set of tires and brakes.
Corvette is likely the best way to go. There are models from 1975-1986 or so for about $10,000, and they are a good start for a race car.
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