I quote:
"Cars running in Stock Category must have been series produced with
normal road touring equipment capable of being licensed for normal road
use in the United States, and normally sold and delivered through the
manufacturer's retail sales outlets in the United States."
That's from the most recent Solo II rules I could find near my desk, but
the wording is still the same. This is the preamble to the Stock section
of the rule book, and it states definitively what Stock means.
Now, precisely what part of the above philosophical statement does the
Type R violate? Or BMW M-cars? Or Porsche M030s, or Camaro 1LEs?
This IS the Sports Car Club of America. It SHOULD be capable of
accommodating the SPORT versions of high-performance cars, even if they
don't have mass-market appeal. God, are we all supposed to want to drive
around in Chevrolet Cavaliers? If you can buy a car from the
manufacturer in a form legal for use on public roads in the USA, then
Stock should have a class for that car. What exactly is so controversial
about this?
The other Categories allow the OWNER of a car to do more after he has
purchased it. If you start trying to say that equipment installed by the
MANUFACTURER takes a car out of Stock, you're starting down an
incredibly slippery slope. Polyurethane bushings? What if, say, new
suspension/tire design practices allow the use of much stiffer bushings
without any tradeoff in harshness, and all of a sudden you've got dozens
of new models coming out with poly bushings?
Look at what you might have called "non-stock" in 1970: four valves per
cylinder, computer-controlled EFI systems with closed-loop mixture
control, turbocharging, variable valve timing, oil coolers, 10" wide
wheels, computer-controlled antilock braking, etc., etc. NOW, what if
specific rules had been written then to disallow those things in Stock?
You'd now have trouble finding a new enthusiast car to run in Stock. Is
anyone really willing to make a stab at the same sort of exercise in
futility now?
It's inevitable that the performance envelope of passenger cars will
grow. It follows that the bar will continually be raised in Stock
classes, and the class structure will have to be re-examined
periodically. The way to do this is NOT to legislate the newest examples
of enthusiast-optioned cars out of Stock altogether. It's all too easy
to fall into the trap of wanting to freeze things where you happen to be
comfortable now, but that's a serious mistake.
If the Type R is too fast for G Stock, put it into another STOCK class,
but leave it (and others like it) in Stock. That's where they belong.
Jay Mitchell
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