So after seeing those pics of those first generation Civics, I got to wondering. What happens to old race cars once their usefulness in pro series is done with and they don't quite fit into club racing ranks? I'm talking about cars that are 10-20 years old, like old World Challenge, IMSA Sedan, Firehawk, SCCA Escort Endurance, Trans-Am, etc.

I located one car awhile ago. My dad works for Thrifty Car Rental and he has in his office some pictures he took of Thrifty sponsored cars. One of them is of an IMSA International Sedan Shelby CSX-T from 1987, the other is of an Eagle Talon from 1990. I found what I believe was the CSX-T for sale in Utah, it was repainted and wrecked so many times that there were no remaining VIN numbers.

That car:

 

This is a picture of the 1987 RX7 that we ran in ESCORT SS endurance races in 1988:



...and this is how it looked a couple of years ago:



I tracked down the current owner through the SCCA Pro Racing BB, after posting something about my history with the car and the last owner who I knew about. This is the car that we got from Mazda NA when it was written off, after falling off of the truck ramps in front of a dealer. We later had it fall off of not one but TWO trailers.

It's also the first and only car that I ever really crashed, perching it on top of the tirewall in T2 at Seattle (aka Pacific Raceways) in a National that we were using as a test-and-tune for the pro series.

I verified the provenance with the then-current owner by identifying some oddities that I could come up with - including VIN plates that had been badly installed by my crooked co-owner, as part of a chop-shop financing scheme he arranged.

It has literally been a race car its entire life. Having started as a plain-Jane GL(?) model, it was updated to the bigger brakes and hubs before we ran it. It was further updated a couple years later with GTU parts, and it has those mirrors today...

Other bits of my history at at http://it2.evaluand.com/gti/history.php

K

 

What happened to a particular 1988 Honda Michelin Civic CX? It ran in the series until the end, was pretty banged up, was bought by an acquaintance as a street car with 30 000 km on the clock, was done up to look like a 1991 Si, was driven on the street for 100 000 km then sold to me in late 2001 when the interior was removed (Michelin cars had the whole stock interior) and a race seat was installed. I then did my competiton school with EMRA in 2002, ran a couple of events in their ST4 class, where the 02 hp Civic fit in perfectly. In the middle of 2003, I took out the 92 hp engine (which still has the HMCS lead tags on it, head has never been off and this motor now powers my Mom's 92 Civic sedan!) and put in a 125 hp SOHC vtec. I then ran in ST1 with EMRA and won the ST1 enduro championship in 2003 with it. I also did a couple of events at Tremblant in their catch-all classes. At the end of the 2003 season, the chassis was cracking around the cage and I retired the car (had it cut up in little pieces and sold the bolt-in cage). That's an example of what happens to these cars.

 

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I tracked down the current owner through the SCCA Pro Racing BB, after posting something about my history with the car and the last owner who I knew about.
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Kirk, I know the car or more truthfully I better know the owner Dave Burchfield in the Cinci area. He pushed an ITS 280Z around with that paint and number for awhile then picked up the RX7. That is home track Mid-Ohio that the pics are taken at. Dave is local to us and we did some Konis for it a year or so ago. Good guy, dedicated racer, maybe not a frontrunner in the class but certainly a guy who enjoys his racing.

You told me the story of the rough day with the Mazda and the two trailers. Next time I see the car I'll know the Paul Harvey "...rest of the story".

I have sold one ITA Corvair to Florida and one ITA '86 CRX Si also to Florida that have disappeared into the void and I have often wondered what became of them. My best racecar was an ITA '88 CRX Si that raced a hard but successful life in the Atlanta area before dying in a major smash into a concrete wall at Turn 6 at Road Atlanta. I recently saw the car they built after that and heard that it had some parts of my car in it but I couldn't really identify it. One '90 ITA CRX Si that I built for someone else but owned myself for a few months and drove once was sold to the Milwaukee area where it has been essentially totalled at least once (more I think) and was on IT.com for sale not long ago.