Good Drag Cars?
 

I am looking at getting into drag racing and am 16 years old. I currently drive a 2011 subaru legacy 2.5 that I could trade in for a new car which would give me about a 15-20 grand budget any ideas on cars? I would also like the car to have good handling.

I learned long ago not to hot rod my daily driver. When you build a dual-purpose car, it cannot be the best at either purpose.

X2 the man knows what he is talking about. :thumbup:


Cole

Very good advice. I'd either start saving up for an older car that needs work to be fast and keep the DD, or use the money towards a used modern but fast car and just leave it alone and enjoy it. $15-20k could easily put you in nice late model GTO, or Cobra or Mach 1 to name a few.

Another thing is racing can get real spendy real quick so something like someones used race car and get used to the rules and running is in order..

Sam

Old ninety era mustang or camaro.and keep the subaru stock and stay easy on that one

Commanderkewl, your handle reminds me of the Saturday morning serials at the movies when I was a kid. One of my favorites was good-guy Commander Cody. He wore a bullet-shaped helmet and had a jet-pack strapped to his back. Fond memories. :thumbup:

CAREFUL techinspector1! ...Your age is showing! :D

Lol I do remember the nic commander Cody ... Guys at work gave it to me years, decades ago.. Seemed spaceman fit too well with me to.. :cool:

We had a job overseas and had some automated welding machines and heads on some really tight technical accessible areas.. In other words, if one went bad, a lot of pipes had to be cut and redone.. one chance only...timed programs for degree location.. We had laborers walking by and one of them stepped on a pendent while I started on a weld,, The only way to do this was with mirrors reflecting the arc from about two feet away.. Less than two inches of play between tubes , so seeing was really difficult.. The pendant that the laborer stepped on started the sequence, so I became committed to two welds simultaneously.. Clearances and access became doubly difficult all at once..

I grabbed both pendants , held one up, mirrored the status, did the same again...back and forth for about three minutes, sweat now pouring off my head as if I was a politician on the witness stand..(ok bad analogy).. Completed the welding, everyone on site was just like speechless...
Checked it out, did the NDE to clear.. all was good.. They went that was cool.. You are the commander.. And that's how I got the nic..

Company went on from barely making it to a decent sized corp before being bought out by the big boys..but I was always be the CommanderKewl.

I did always think the bullet helmet was kewl.. :pimp:

You could trade it (plus some cash of course) for a WRX. They run pretty good.Or a supercharged mini cooper. They are pretty snappy too.I like both. Having driven many of them, I would say the wrx would be hard to beat, I like the euro feel and look of of the mini though, so it would be tough for me to choose.Having replaced pistons and valves in a few WRX motors due to valves letting go I would opt for the Mini. Dont know if there is a class for them in drag racing but if so, you may win for lack of competition.
Otherwise getan 80 s malibu wagon and build it to the hilt, keep the subie for parts fetchin like was said here ealier.

those have to be the 2 most unreliable cars on earth today.

keeps me employed tho.


i would suggest the Hyundai Genesis if you want something more reliable and priced fairly and goes around corners all in one package.
(trust me it hurts to say that and not mustang or camaro but Hyundai is a great car these days

Hot rod as a daily driver?
 

Don't do it. You need two vehicles, a real fire breathing rod knocker for a hot rod and a utilitary daily driver that it good on gas, reliable and easy, cheap to repair with road reliability to the point where you can jump in it, turn the key and drive across the country. Preferably a smaller truck so you can drive parts to the machine shop, go to swap meets, ETC. leave the truck stock so it starts and drives good, after-all you need a way to get to work, possibly a third vehicle, a enduro (dual sport) bike. Fun, reliable well built, fantastic great fuel mileage, (chicks love em). The money you save in fuel will be enough to buy the parts for the hot rod.

All depends on how fast you want to go and do you want to win a lot of rounds or just go have fun. I built a 350 for a guy that had a 78-80 monte carlo. He was track champ in a street class the frist year out.Drag racing is 1/4 car 1/4 driver and 50% luck.Pick a car thats cheap and that you can find lots of hp parts at swap meets for.

The G in G body stands for geat. ;)

Just like everyone else said.... Get a DD and a project car.. I have spent countless nights helping friends all night getting their car up and running so they have a way to go to work in the morning cause they modified something and it broke. and good handling and drag racing can be two different things... suspension setups are usually very different and don't go hand in hand... IRS are very expensive to get to hold power but are great for handling where a full axle rearend is better for drag racing but not handling... depends how extreme you want to go i guess....