As someone who has been doing track days on the reg for almost a decade in a pretty good variety of cars, I thought I might actually have some useful input for once, so here it goes.
First of all, I have a few questions which I will ask here and them make inferences about the answers to so I can proceed with questionably relevant responses.
1) What car do you currently drive?
2) How much performance driving experience do you currently have?
3) What track(s) will you primarily be ruinning?
4) Will this car be your only car?
5) What is your realistic price range?
Now, let's see what I can get so far:
Looking at buying a car for track and daily driver. It's gonna be at least a couple of years before I buy it, but may as well look at options now. Really leaning toward a C6 Z06, but that's a pretty penny. Also thinking about a 350Z, but not sure how the power is in those. Don't want something I'm going to get bored of. An M3 sounds good, but again, those aren't cheap. Another problem with the C6 and 350Z is they just aren't the most practical for a daily. Any suggestions?
From this, I assume that it will be your only car. I'm also guessing your price range is (you think) around $30K USD, as all of those cars can be had for that money (or much less i.e. 350Z).
I'd like to limit myself to $50K. That alone is going to take me a few years of putting a few hundred into savings every week.
Here you say $50K but that you aren't close to being able to drop that yet. Honestly, I would recommend that even if you could stretch and make $50K happen, don't. I'll explain later.
I'm coming from a motocross background and I got bored of less powerful bikes pretty quickly.
So, some performance history. Do you have any in cars, or has it been strictly 2 wheels so far? If it's been only bikes, you have to keep in mind that motocross and track driving are
really different beasts. Just because you get bored on a 250 in moto definitely doesn't mean you'd get bored in something like a Miata on a road course.
The reason I ask is because while I personally am not an instructor, I know a lot of people who are and they all say the same thing. The worst person they get a track days is the guy with no real experience who just bought his new super fast sports car (around here it's the GT3 Guy or the C7 Z06 Guy most often) and wants to
go fast in it. I've had the chance to drive some pretty quick metal on the track and it's great, but I started in real slow stuff and learned the skills.
I'm not saying you can't start with a fast car and work your way up to being able to use it, but it's harder. There's always the frustration/temptation about that you're not using the car's full envelope that makes you want to push harder and that's when you start having problems.
Plus, you have to keep in mind that if this is your only car, you're going to be driving it on the road 95% of the time and at a pace far below its performance threshold. That alone will help keep it exciting when you get to a track and can finally actually push it, cause you'll be so conditioned to the street speed. Just being able to use the car to its actual limit is its own sort of reward.
That said, it's mostly impossible not to end up getting conditioned to the speed, especially in a car you drive every day. When I first got my M3 I was really impressed by the power and grip, but after driving it for a year it wasn't that impressive when I tracked it a couple weeks ago. I knew what to expect and it delivered on the expectation. Doing 10K+ miles in a car every year is going to get you pretty used to it, so you're never going to get something that keeps that wow-fast exhilaration forever unless you can spend a
lot more than $50K. Focus on something you're going to like driving and can live with for 10K miles a year.
The biggest factor for me is reliability. I don't work on vehicles because I just don't want to dig in and start messing things up, and there's no one I trust enough to teach me. Everyone I know that works on them takes shortcuts, and I want everything done properly. Which leads back to why I want something reliable. Don't want my car in the shop every other month for repairs and having to wait a week or two to get it back.
This is where we start getting into 'realistic budget' territory.
Tracking a car is really
really hard on it.
@-Fred- hit it pretty well here:
Race what you can afford to fix, basically. Vettes and M3s while pretty good, also cost a lot to maintain, and aftermarket parts are not cheap either. Stuff that needs to be replaced often like brakes and tires will eat away your budget quickly.
Think about how much you're going to be upping the demand on wear items and even on things you wouldn't traditionally think of as wear items, like ball joints, bushings, and control arms. If you're not working on it yourself, you're going to be spending a decent bit of time in the shop having what amounts to regular maintenance for a track toy done, and that's going to cost you.
The car I have tracked by far the most is a 1972 Porsche 911 that has a load of work put into it. It makes ~225whp and tips in just under 2200lbs, which is good for some pretty decent speed. That thing eats 40K mile tires in <8K miles, and that's still being used 75% as a street car. When we run slicks on it, we get maybe half a dozen days out of a set, which means at least 2 sets a year. Tires for that car are really cheap, in the range of $150 per for stuff like SuperSports or R888s, and slicks are fairly comparable.
Tires for my M3 are
5 times that price and they would wear a
lot faster on that car since it's much heavier.
On the 911, we go through a set of brake pads about once a year, sometimes a bit more often, and can resurface the rotors at least once. Pads for that car are in the neighborhood of $350-400 for a full set of performance pads, and rotors are ~$200 per. That's somewhere around $1200 a year on brakes for that car before you even consider labor, which will double that easily. It weighs 2200lbs and hits a top speed of ~155mph.
My M3 weighs 3400lbs and hits a top speed of 155mph on the same track, where it hits the electronic limiter. I would go through a
lot more brakes on that car if I was tracking it regularly. Pads and rotors for that car run a little bit more than for the 911 (maybe $1500 in parts for a full replacement), but I'm not sure you could resurface the rotors.
On the 911, we inspect the bushings, control arms, tie rod ends, and everything else before every track day, and we end up replacing things like that pretty often. I would guess in a year we're replacing something like that at least twice. Those are generally easy jobs, but paying a shop to do them is going to add up quickly.
Those items will not wear more slowly on a newer, heavier car. Plus, we bleed the brakes before every event and do oil changes quite frequently. Those may be less required on a newer car, but it would still be something you'd want to at least have considered before you hit the track. The engine is turning a lot more revs in 200 mile on the track than it is on the street, so you need to be changing fluids a lot more often. Even a cheap oil change is going to cost you >$100 at a shop, and you don't want a cheap oil change in a track car.
The 911 has gone through 2 engine tear-downs and 2 transmission rebuilds since we've been tracking it, plus an extra differential. How cheap do you think those were, even doing them in our garage (except the tranny, I don't 🤬 with those)? How cheap do you think they'll be on a newer car?
Luckily, we've never had an off bad enough to actually damage the car. Plenty of people I know have though, and your insurance counts for dick when you're out on the track. If you stuff your car into a barrier and need body repairs (or even worse frame repairs) you're going to be paying 100% out of pocket for that. Can you afford to do that with whatever you're tracking?
Ask anyone who has done them. This is the real cost of tracking a car. It's definitely not unmanageable, but you need to be prepared for it. If you think you can just about afford a $50K car, buy a $25-30K car and keep the rest set aside for the inevitable. Even a car that you think of as reliable will have things go wrong with it that you'd never see on a street car. It will happen.
Now, as you're considering car, consider things like that. How fast will it eat tires? How expensive are the brakes? Is there a local shop I trust that works on X car? What's their labor rate like?
From what you've thrown out as ideas, I'll say this: I would stay away from a 'Vette. Of all the fairly common cars I see at track days, 'Vettes are the most likely by far to leave on a trailer, especially the Z06s. They have engine and transmission issues like you wouldn't believe (*cough*
@McLaren *cough*) and I have personally seen two get stuffed because of suspension failure.
On top of that, you have the fact that tires are really expensive and it will shred them real quick, and brakes aren't exactly cheap. Plus as a daily, the economy is laughable and the practicality is slim to none.
I see a few 350Zs here and there, but I don't know much about them and can't speak to their reliability. I would recommend looking at 2006+ year cars though, because they got a pretty hefty power bump in '06.
For a daily you could do a lot worse. I would imagine one to be fairly similar to my M3 for operating costs and practicality, and I have no issues with my car.
For the M3, a lot depends on which generation you'd be looking to get into. The E36s are cheap and fun, and there is a yuge aftermarket for them, but they're getting on 25 years old and finding clean ones is getting harder, plus you're going to be putting a lot of stress on some pretty old components at this point if they haven't had a lot of work done.
E46s are not outrageously expensive yet but they're climbing. You absolutely need one that has the rear subframe sorted out (same with the E36 actually) if you're going to track it, and you really need to stay away from the SMG cars for tracking because the system is complex and expensive to repair when it inevitably breaks.
For either the E36 or the E46, costs are middling. See above for estimates on my E46.
In conclusion, just make sure you know what you're getting in to and be smart about it. You seem to have the right idea with that, starting your research early and reaching out to a community that has some experience with it, so props for that.
As others have mentioned, there are quite a few people here who track their cars and would be happy to lend their advice, so spend some time and take a look. Once you think you know what you want, find an enthusiast forum for that car and start over with the lurking ans asking process with people who really know those cars. Eventually you'll find the right car and you'll be able to start shopping, which is when the real fun starts 👍
