Nah that's fine man, everyone is entitled to their own opinions and it makes for interesting discussion.stuartb said:Final thought, I've been to a goodly number of race days at various tracks, they often have little stock car races in between the open wheel stuff and funnily enough, hand on heart, I've never seen a single accord or integra on a track, ever, it's just golfs, fiestas and maybe a civic (but even that's rare)
Is not like anyone can say that's a budget thing either, golfs are in the same price range, more or less, so why is that then?
I think accords and integras are (albeit sporty) really just road cars, they're not really racers are they. Or, if they are, what sort of series do they race in, touring cars? (dominated by bm / volvo / vauxhall / chrysler..) rally? (Dominated by citroen / ford / scoobies and mitsies)
Maybe I just go to all the wrong track days
I dont mean to sound all negative about honda, why would I have one myself otherwise? not trying to start an argument or anything, in fact if you do have good comebacks to any of those things then feel free, I'll learn something and have interesting things to say about my choice of manufacturer in conversation in the futurewin / win
I would disagree with you though on quite a few points, the Mini is a fine handling car, but really it's not anything special and its very basic design so does not requite much sophistication anywhere, its light, small, low powered car. I would argue that the Peugeot 106 GTI is a better handling car than the Mini as far as supermini's go, that car could hold its own against supercars!
As for track days, ATR's and ITR's owners regularly take them to track days, i'm not sure if you mean amateur racing series or just normal track day thingys, I wouldn't expect them to be raced in a race series, these cars are rare and most cherised example are not going to be risked into a series.
As for them being road cars, well yes of course they are performance cars for the road, all production cars designed for consumer sale are designed for road use, apart from the real hard core ones, things like Your M3 too will be compromised in some ways. But they are also tested for track use, and they can easily be used on tracks as many owners do, you should go and look at the tech used on these cars they are real racing tech, double wishbones suspensions, high revving engines etc, the Integra was known as a street legal race car, heck the DC5 Integra was sold in Japan as bare bones, so people could buy them to race prep them to their own specs.
As for them being raced, the Accord was raced in BTCC for a decade during super touring cars, the DC5 Integra was raced in BTCC for a number of years, then in Japan Integra was a common racing car too.
I'm not sure how much you know about Honda and their cars, but you are seriously underestimating their cars and their values, the Type R cars are proper road legal race car stuff, which had tech they gleaned from their f1 days, things like double wishbone suspension and vtec were derived from their F1 know how. Just look up the Type R philosphy and criteria too.
The Mini was a good car, but you can't compare it to an ITR, even british journalists and mags laud the ITR as the finest fwd handling car and most adore the very british Mini.
