A few weeks ago our buddy James Crosby, who does some trick fabrication and design work for Ridetech, was on his way home from the Pleasanton Goodguys show behind the wheel of his 1990ish half-ton Chevy truck, pulling Ridetech’s west coast Camaro project on the trailer. Coming over the Grapevine on Interstate 5, he blew the trans up in the truck in grand fashion. We’re talking fire and everything. It took all his bottled water and other random crap to put it out, but at least the truck didn’t burn down. Anyway, after calling a tow truck and making arrangements for them to come pick up the truck and trailer he decided he would have them towed to another buddies shop and just drive the Camaro home. This is where it got interesting.
The California Highway Patrol officer who had stopped to check on James wasn’t really thrilled when James told him what his plan was. You see, the Camaro has Ridetech, Baer, and Falken decals all over it. The cop asked, in all seriousness, “Isn’t this a race car?” To which James responded, “Well yes and no. It’s a street car that gets raced a lot, but it’s licensed and insured and legal.” After scratching his head and looking over the Camaro, the cop just shook his head and let James get on with it.
Which then inspired our question. Normally the question is “What is a street car?”, but today it’s the other way around, and with any luck will spawn days worth of debate on the subject. Street car, race car, whatever.
The BangShift Question Of The Day is “What is a race car?”
In my opinion, a True Race Car is a vehicle that is not capable of being driven on the street i.e. John Forces Funny Cars v/s Larry Larson’ Nova.
Couldn’t agree more
I would pay to see this. Force would need his crying towel after he gets his ass handed to him by a street car.
With all due respect, TOTAL BRAVO SIERRA!
A race car is a car entered into competition, period. For example, there’s a good photo in one of the magazines this month of Lee Petty’s Daytona 500-winning ’59 Olds that shows its North Carolina license plate from back in the day . . . Larry Larson’s car is more of a race car than about 99 percent of the boring, slow, trailered bracket cars that populate most local strips.
Your dad pretty much summed it up. Its a car that is used for racing only and no longer has the required equipment to legally drive on the street.
ANY car (vehicle) that’s raced, simple as that. I have seen however, lots of “race cars” on the street that have never been raced, so IMO, not all race cars are truely “race cars”.
No lights, no wipers, slicks, open pipes and various inspection stickers for roll bars, belts, fire system ect.
“race car” = “trailer queen” 🙂
every car has some race car in it, go to an SCCA/Auto-X/GoodGuys event and drive youre car, you will go home with a smile and a new sport, I drive my race car every were
After driving most of my “race” cars all over the damn country [blown, injected Mustang, 1.2G 66 Chevelle autocross car, 2500 lb 33 Ford road course car, to name a few] I have decided that I just don’t friggen care. If I want to go into a coma on the interstate, I’ll drive my CTSV. If I want a several hour hard on…I’ll drive the 33 Ford. If I want a hard on with A/C…its the Chevelle. If I want to wow all the teenage boys…its the Mustang.
MOST of the time…my work car is a 72 Chevelle with 4 wheel drum brakes and a bitchen AM radio!
A race car is the one you can’t or won’t drive on the street because race car.
On my way home from the Power Tour last year heading up Hwy 287 from Decatur, it seemed every cop I passed thought I was driving a race car since my Camaro had the Optima Qualifier stickers and numbers on both sides, I never got followed by more police cars trying to figure out whether I was going to speed through their towns….
I personally feel that any car that meets the current legislation for registered legal road use is a street car , regardless of the modifications to it. One thing that IS a pet peeve to me is the allowing of race or modified parts for sale to Joe public and once they install them they get their car impounded or defected. Only thing I can see here would be the Govts. tax grab from the till.
A race car is any car which has been modified to be raced. You can race with any car, but you would mod it so you would win your races
It doesn’t matter how fast it is; if it’s built to race in a CLASS, competing against other similar cars, and is not street legal, it’s a racecar. Anything from a 4 cylinder pure stock oval track racer to a Pro Mod drag car.