I need to find a sugar daddy.

"If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent" (essextee) 07/06/2019 at 09:27 • Filed to: None

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IMSA GTU Fiero chassis #1 has come up on BaT. This car sat in GM’s heritage center for 20+ years before being liquidated in the 2009 bankruptcy. The man who bought it has put it up for sale. $21k with three days left.

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Maxima Speed > If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent 07/06/2019 at 09:39

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How is this not worth way, way more than that?

vondon302 > If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent 07/06/2019 at 10:03

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Oh to have money.

If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent > Maxima Speed 07/06/2019 at 10:04

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It totally is, but people who both have the desire to buy vintage racers and the means t o do so are few and far between. I wouldn't be surprised if this listing doesn't sell.

If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent > Maxima Speed 07/06/2019 at 10:13

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Not to mention that despite our collective 80s nostalgia these last few years, car values from that era are still quite low. We might wax about how rad a Beretta GTZ is, but nobody is seeking out and buying up the survivors.

ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com > Maxima Speed 07/06/2019 at 10:42

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This is a full on, tube-frame race car that shares absolutely nothing beyond a few body panels of similar shape with a Fierro, or any other, road going car. And they are hugely expensive to run, and usually won’t have a competitive home in any modern class. This is not dissimilar to buying an 800hp 90's trans am car for not unreasonable money, because the purchase price is merely the down payment on the running costs of the car. Scrolling down the comments, it looks like the owner is indicating the car currently needs about $ 30k put into it in the form of a fuel cell service, new hoses (all custom) and a brake system rebuild to be track ready. This should give an idea of what it costs to run a car like this.

High compression, blue printed race motors with rebuild costs in the many tens of thousands of dollars and lifespans measured in not more than a few dozen of hours of run time. Big dollar gearbox rebuilds on the regular. Bigly e xpensive consumables (especially things like hubs assemblies for which replacement parts may or may not exist anymore). And all this to vintage race (which can become  more like lapping than racing as often as not).

And when things go wrong, bring your big boy wallet. Most of the suspension and chassis are probably one-off parts, which means taking a blank check to the best machinist and fabricators you know to make new ones. I don’t recall the ad saying anything about coming with the original molds for all the bodywork, so that becomes an order of magnitude more expensive to replace.

Boxer_4 > If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent 07/06/2019 at 10:47

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Yet...

ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com > vondon302 07/06/2019 at 10:55

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To have all the money... You’d need six figures burning a hole in your pocket to play with this car.

GoodIdeaAtTheTime > If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent 07/06/2019 at 11:04

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Buy IMSA GTU Fiero. Find rusted, broken, project Fiero for cheap. Grab VIN and title. Let the “road legal” IMSA GTU shenanigans begin. If roadkill did it to an old NASCAR car, and in California no less. Can’t be that much more difficult in a state without inspections,...

ST80MND > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com 07/06/2019 at 12:54

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“And when things go wrong, bring your big boy wallet”. As a e30 owner, truer words have never been spoken!

Arch Duke Maxyenko, Shit Talk Extraordinaire > If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent 07/06/2019 at 12:56

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vondon302 > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com 07/06/2019 at 13:58

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For sure. But 3.0 Kinsler mid engine in that livery. Once prepped for vintage racing it might be even cheap to run but its a long ways from that.

If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent > Arch Duke Maxyenko, Shit Talk Extraordinaire 07/06/2019 at 14:15

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I don't think he'd be interested. Besides, I'd prefer a sugar daddy that has a real head instead of just a neck that's blowing a bubble.

ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com > vondon302 07/06/2019 at 16:42

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Well, it looks like a complete, but disassembled SD4 engine in rebuildable condition goes for about $ 15K these days (when they can be found, which doesn’t appear to be always ) . Figure that amount in addition in machining/labor/custom piston costs on the rebuild. It looks like a standard rebuild from the circle track shop that used to specialize in these engines was 12K, which assumes the block, crank, rods and heads were useable. That shop doesn’t exist anymore, nor does it sound like many, if any, circle track guys are still playing with the engine.

If you only ran 4-5 race weekends a year, you might get a season out of each rebuild. Call it likely 2 rebuilds a year on a full schedule. Non rebuilable engines are out there for a few grand, but those would be things that have been bored and/or decked too many times to be used again, but that might have things like cranks or rods that would still be useful. These were high dollar race engines when new, and its been 20+ years since these were played with in significant numbers.

Big boy race cars are seriously expensive to run. Like this, you can buy a whole lot of interesting former world challenge cars (like those W orld C hallenge 2nd gen vipers that were auctioned off a few years back) for the price of a new GTI or less, but there’s a reason for that.

The video of the owner starting the car and driving it down his street reveals why he ran it one time after buying it at action follow the GM bankruptcy . The dude has a nice house in Phoenix , but it is an order of magnitude less house than the folks who vintage race this kind of car usually have. He may have gotten the car for song, and he may have even scrapped together enough to get it race ready in 2009 for a vintage event , and then he learned what it would really take to do it ever again.

According to the comments, it currently only needs about $ 30k spent on it in the form of a fuel cell service (an every 7 year expense) , new hoses and a brake system rebuild to be race ready again . Figure in that big dollar engine rebuild every year, a big dollar gearbox rebuild every season, a big dollar clutch possibly more than once a season, big dollar shock rebuilds every season or so (assuming those B ilsteins can still be serviced , it’s been awhile since I’ve seen something like those running around the track), rod ends in the suspension every year, big dollar brakes several times a season, a $2k set of tires somewhere between every weekend and possibly each day it is on track. Some expensive multi-piece wheels that will have to be inspected for cracks and roundness on a very regular basis. Wheel bearings replaced several times a season (and what those are on the car would be a great question, in term of if replacement parts exist anymore. With luck, they are the race hubs that a company used to make for C4 vettes playing in GT1 , or Coleman Nascar parts, or similar ).

And when something actually breaks on the car, or goes wrong leaving the track surface , or it hits something, this stuff will seem minor compared to what fabricating new chassis and suspension components will cost, along with fabricating new body work without the original molds .

All told, this car strikes me as a m u s eu m piece ideally . A casual search suggests t here doesn’t seem to be enough engine parts left out there to run one of these long term, even if you were a millionaire with a Fiero fetish (and I don’t know of any of those).

Buying a used Formula Mazda would be a faster way around the track for a fraction of the money.

vondon302 > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com 07/07/2019 at 11:35

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Get out of here with your rational well thought out argument . This is the internet danmit!

;)