Tuesday, December 5, 2017

New Chapter - Project GT

From bone stock AP1 to SCCA National Championship winning BSP car...that has been the story of Bumblestook to date since the day I got her almost seven and half years ago. It's been an incredible adventure. In between, she was built to compete in STR, rebuilt and reimaged as a track car where we enjoyed many track days screaming at 9000+ rpm back when she still had an F20C under the hood. She then underwent no fewer than three revisions of BSP builds in the past 4 years pursuing the goal of taking the top spot in BSP. So what's next? Where do we go from here? Do we continue to pour tons of time and money and go wild in Super Street Mod? What's left?

Starting Project GT - 12-5-2017
Well one thing's for sure, she's not getting sold. I've decided to retire her from nationally competitive autocross but her story is not done. The reason is simple. While it's been an incredible learning opportunity the past few years pursuing a dream and she's a dream to drive every second she's on course, it requires an immense amount of work to maintain a top tier nationally competitive Street Prepared car. Triple that effort when you live in NYC and can't just walk out into your garage to work on her or go to events. I've lost track of the number of times I've day dreamed while towing her to events about how nice it would be to be able to just back her off the trailer and drive around and enjoy her more than just a few times a year.

Parts starting to flood in - 12-5-2017
That day dreaming stops now. I've got a really fun build sheet and without class restrictions, I can finally do whatever I want. I won't divulge the details just yet but I'm calling this "Project GT" for Gran Tourismo. She's not going back to stock but she is going to be made street legal once again, retaining much of her performance but being softened just enough so I enjoy her more. Finally she's going to get that full respray to bring her back to her full glory. Something a championship winning car deserves. She'll probably still come out once in a while to play at local events and some time in the future we may return to do some track days but she will cease to become a trailer queen and I refuse to just put a cover on and keep her stored away and not driven like S2000s were meant to be driven.