If I provided rental HPDE cars, would there be a market?

What would people want to rent? Entry level? Higher?

I envision a Honda with full roll cage, NASCAR bars on both sides. Intercom instructor to passenger. Track support. Gauranteed to pass tech.

 

why just HPDE? what would be different if it was for racing?

 

Perhaps you can test the market by placing an ad in the nasa newsletter in your area?

The response could be an indicator....but a response isn't a paid driver but again, could be a good leading indicator in making your decision.

 

I have some opinions on the viability of this, having rented out a lot of racing cars since 1984. It seems that rentals work better at the higher end of the market, where dollars are less tight, for example. A bimmer might have more takers (and at a higher price) than a Honda.

K

 

Cost. Level of preperation.

Probably rent race cars too.

 

Good input K but we are trying to hit the Honda Market for the rest of our services.

Start in HPDE and train the person for racing.

 

i ask because i can only imagine anyone wanting to rent a car for license testing and full season race rental, but only if it was capable of winning.

i might be short sighted, but i cant really think of a reason anyone would want to pay to rent for just a ordinary HPDE day at a reasonable price for both parties. especially if you still had to put up a chunk of cash if you crashed it. might as well use your own car.

and id have to agree with dr.k on that. anyone with the money to pay for a rental i think would want to pay for something exotic. its cooler to rent a track m3 or ferrari for a day. not quite a honda.

 

I would be more hesitant to rent to an HPDE'r moreso based on the general level of experience. While I realize there are "career" DE'rs with more experience than alot of racers, I would feel more comfortable knowing the racer has at least met the track time experience amount for the license requirements vs. anyone renting for an occasional track lapping day. It's a liability thing. Just my $0.02.

 

Many clubs won't accept convertables without extra rollover protection and people don't want to add it to their street car. Other people who have minivans, SUV's, and assorted other trucks may want to try running on track but can't or don't want a track car. They might be a market. I think the real issue is that a lot of the people who might do the rental won't be able to afford to fix the car if they break it. You would need some sort of insurance available and that extra cost could also make it too expensive for the target market.

 

Then some Ferrari driver might want to drive a POS Honda.

 

You might be able to rent them to people who are interested in getting their racing license.

I was helping out a friend who was getting his racing license at willow springs. Several of the students that attended the school were using rentals (miatas and celicas) and I think one guy rented a civic.

There was probably 15 or 20 students or so and I think 5 of them were in rentals.

 

I think I'd have to agree with the exotic crowd. Most people I know of who get into HPDE do it originally to try out their own car on track. The only reason I can see for most people to rent a more-or-less race prepped Honda would be for something like an SCCA comp school. The kind of thing I could see people renting for HPDE would be something a bit less ordinary. Ferrari, maybe, though I'd expect that to be rather expensive, so not attainable by most people. What I'd personally be most interested in trying out would be a "real" race car. A sports racer like a Radical would be perfect.

 

I could see those having run their stock, or close to, street cars on track, wanting to see what the feel of a race prepped, suspensioned, race tire'd car would feel like before making the commitment to spending the money on upgrading their own car. However, I think that demographic would be too narrow to focus on. I would have liked to try something like this, before building my own race car, but only once.

 

I personally would only rent a car for HPDE if it was a track further than say 12 to 14 hours away from me to trailer to. I would definitely rent for a comp license school and most likely for a few races in one season to see if it's really what I wanted to move up to. But for the most part I don't think I'd rent for HPDE often since I have my own car already.

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Agent Smith &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote"> A sports racer like a Radical would be perfect.
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On the other hand This is exactly what I'd go out of my way to rent.

 

It seems that renting out a race preped car would be better because it could be used for both HPDE and racing.

I'm thinking H4 trim???

 

I think H4 trim would be a good level of prep. It's easy for a novice to drive, yet can be quite fast and fun when driven by more experienced drivers. Plus, in general they're not very expensive to own and run. When you break them, it's relatively cheap to fix them. What do you estimate that you would want to charge for a weekend to make it worth your time/effort/investment?

I was actually just thinking of trying to find a way that I could rent an H4-like car w/ 2 seats for the next NASA event here so that I could sign my dad up for HPDE1 as a surprise/gift. My car has a diagonal cage brace that runs through the passenger side of the car, so I can't put a 2nd seat in. My street car is my tow rig, so that won't really work either. So, in other words, I think there would be a market.

- Scott

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by FlyZlow &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I think H4 trim would be a good level of prep. It's easy for a novice to drive, yet can be quite fast and fun when driven by more experienced drivers. Plus, in general they're not very expensive to own and run. When you break them, it's relatively cheap to fix them. What do you estimate that you would want to charge for a weekend to make it worth your time/effort/investment?


- Scott</TD></TR></TABLE>

100 Million Dollars.......

Oops sorry. Not sure yet. But Delivery from Virginia to Arizona might be expensive.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Grumpy &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">100 Million Dollars.......

Oops sorry. Not sure yet. But Delivery from Virginia to Arizona might be expensive.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Haha. Yeah, I think I'd have to find something more local.

Just a couple more thoughts: I think that you could build an HPDE car in pseudo-H4 trim for around $5000 if you didn't have to worry about it being competitive and fully race legal. It seems like it wouldn't be too hard to pull your investment back out of something like that. If you did want to make it fully race legal and competitive, you're probably looking at more like $10k minimum, but you'd open yourself up to a larger audience. Running costs for an H4 car vary, but I think most of us would say that we use up around $150-200 in tires and $20 in brake pads each weekend. You also have to factor in oil change, gas, longer term wear items, etc., but I'd bet that your cost wouldn't be more than $400 per weekend or so. That number could probably be cut in half (just a guess) if you were only running it in HPDE with street tires.

 

I only know of one person who might rent one. My boss. He knows I do track days HPDE, but between he and his wife they have a Toyota Highlander and a minivan. He has asked several times about my track days, saying that he wants to come out to the track sometime and drive. But I told him he would have to rent a car because he can't really drive his SUV at the track (maybe he can, but...)

And he would be one to fork out large $$ for the higher end car with safety features like a cage. I would have to agree that most people who would spend the money are the ones to whom money is not a major factor.

Edit: What kind of costs would people be looking at for insurance for the track day?

 

It does make sense to do a race-legal car. In NASA, the transition to hardware that most people don't have happens the day they run their first race, right? In SCCA, you have the driver school market which would make really good sense, if (a) the school season weren't just a couple of weekends a year, or (b) you wanted to travel all up and down the coast going to schools.

H4 makes excellent sense because of the crossover factor. Build an IT car, and do it that way, then you dramatically expand the potential revenues. Where this really begins to make sense is if you are going to be at an event ANYWAY (true for Grumpy, pretty much), you have the infrastructure to build and maintain the car (also true, now), and you have the mechanism to get the car and stuff headed to the track anyhow...? It's a big money loser if one calculates the cost of time to maintain, transport, and support a car at the track, if it's JUST for the rental revenues.

If I had a pile of dough, I'd build three of whatever I was racing, get a real rig and toterhome, and do rentals. BIS has abdicated the VW market, so there might be a niche there but a pessimist would say that all anyone wants to rent seem to be those danged Miatae. We've actually talked about doing a MkII Golf for a rental and tarmac rally car - something that won't be as much of a disappointment if a customer bends it or I toss it on its lid again in TN next year.

K

 

Ive seen quite a few HPDE students rent SpecMiatas, so yes there is a market. And those rentals arent cheap, so if you can undercut the pricing by a good margin (offer options like street tires) then I think you will have them rented out every weekend.

although personally I think a balanced rwd car would have a bigger market. Something like e30s, 240sxs, MR2s, etc.

 

Personally, I'd do CRX/Civic stuff in H4/ITA trim.

NASCAR bars that extend into the passenger side door will be legal in SCCA next year. So basically build ITA/H4 cars with a passenger seat, harness, and intercom. Come race time, just pull that stuff out (or leave it in for ballast).

You are then covering alot of potential market with one chassis.

The SM rental market (at least around here) is flooded. BSI, Evans, OPM, Daniels... I wouldn't want to try to break into that.

I have considered building another car or two and doing rentals because I certainly don't have issues finding people who want to drive the current car. The problem is not building the cars as much as building the infrastructure to support them. Bigger truck. Bigger trailer, More tools, More Spares, Crew... Thats what stops me pretty quickly.

 

but then if youre just planning on renting out a CRX in H4 trim, might as well buy any one of the several good chassis with a rollcage already and buy used. why build a NEW car just for renting, or even racing for that matter...

 

If you are good, and can prove it, you can make good money doing rentals.

There are ALOT of people out there who want to race, have lots of available cash, and can't/don't want to work on their own car.
Stu at BSI is likely going to retire early on Spec Miata rentals. I think at Road Atlanta earlier this year they had something like 11 cars rented. If you think of each of them at a nice round $1500 a pop... Yeah. Thats some real money made over the course of one weekend..
But Stu has the reputation that has gotten him to the point that he often has more potential renters than cars. Same thing at OPM. These guys can't seem to build these things fast enough to keep up with the demand (and crashes ).
I think BSI and OPM did EVERY event on the southeastern calendar this year. Thats alot. Something like 30 weekends IIRC.
Yeah... Thats alot of money.

 

One thing that would concern me is car setup. Are you going to tailor the car to the driver's level of experience?

Meaning that you put a track n00b, or some guy with 2-3 events under his belt in a car with 800/1200 lb/in spring rates and he'll likely lift off at the wrong time and off he goes. But this is the type setup you'd need to make the car fast enough for someone that was experienced and wanting to go fast in whatever they rented.

This is just one example, but I can think of a few things in the car that might need adjustment depending on ability(mostly suspension related).


It's not a huge pain, but it could add up to the time to constantly be tweaking on the car to rent it out to different people.