Wow! Lots of responses, and from all over the map.
I can't answer everyone individually, so I'll answer a few and respond in general to the rest.
First, Ramcatlarry wrote: "Item 'C' is where I have a problem. In the early 1960s, we invented the parts that later became 'commercial' parts. You fabricated what you needed from what you could find."
I've been having problems with "Item C" also; it's a very slippery topic. One of the most important pieces of this Vintage-style idea is that the cars are built and maintained with parts anyone can get right now from almost any retailer. No nearly impossible to get, fragile, irreplaceable, stoopid expensive vintage parts at all. Vintage parts, and especially rare and expensive vintage parts should, and rightly so, be reserved for serious building projects replicating the history of our hobby - not just banging around the track for the fun of it.
However I DO NOT mean to imply that every single part in the entire car MUST be purchased from a retailer (and thank you for pointing that out!) You purchase whatever parts you need or want from the retailer of your choice, and fabricate whatever other parts you want (the most obvious example would be parts for the chassis) to build your car. Just like when we were doing this for real back in the late sixties, the goal is (as John Havlicek puts it) to "tinker together" a functional car and have fun doing it. I still fabricate what I need from what I can find all the time - have you ever seen my Popsicle stick wing car?
Mike Swiss has been quite vocal with his ideas, opinions and questions, so I'll try to respond in a "lightning round" style:
"This just sounds like Retro to me."
Okay, it sounds like Retro to you (and others), but it is emphatically not. No car I build in vintage-style would ever pass tech in a Retro race. Cars built to look and perform like vintage racers, whether they are replicas or just vintage-style are not Retro racers, and Retro Racers are not vintage anything. Vintage and Retro are different animals. The Retro guys have nothing to be the slightest bit concerned about from me.
"What exactly is different?"
Retro builds to rules, whereas I (and anyone else who is interested) will be building to knowledge and discipline, in order to achieve a specific historically accurate appearance and performance.
Slightly looser chassis rules?
No rules; knowledge and discipline.
"And the the term "commercially available" is really up to interpretation."
And I think you are engaging in obfuscation. Here is my "interpretation": You buy slot car parts from a slot car retailer, you buy materials and supplies from McMaster-Carr or Amazon or your local hobby shop. You buy whatever you need to build your car from people who are in business to sell retail products to the public.
"IMO, you would have a real big, complicated rule book, or the most hated tech director on the planet. LOL"
No rule book, no tech director, no bickering, no dickering, no hassles. If you want to organize a racing series for these things and deal with the headaches, go ahead. I never said anything about organized racing.
"I don't get how you tech the "vintage look" when you state "Innovative design solutions are encouraged."
It's easy; there is no tech. Regarding the "vintage look", anyone who cannot tell the difference between a vintage 1968 Steube or Emott chassis and a modern chassis has no business doing this and need not apply. And as I recall, pro builders in the late sixties and early seventies came up with clever and innovative design solutions with notable regularity, and virtually all of them passed tech. Building a vintage-style 1967 Jaildoor inline would properly require the D-can motor to be mounted in an endbell drive configuration. To accomplish this with a vintage-style motor based on a Parma Deathstar or Rotor setup would require an innovative design solution, right?
"This sounds like a great idea if there was a eight-dozen retired guys, hanging out at the track 3 days a week, building, and they could run their "innovative designs" by the track owner or tech director."
This sounds like you have something against retired guys having fun doing what they like. Retired guys are notorious for not giving a hoot what anybody thinks. But at least you concede that it could be a great idea. There's hope yet.
"All you need is someone putting 6 hours into a chassis, and be told it can't run, to kill the class."
It's not a "class", so there's nothing to kill. These are just runners built to resemble vintage racers.
"This sounds like it could possibly work if all items that could be used were determined to be in ample supply and were on a list."
This sounds like you are taking something simple and arbitrarily making it into something impossibly difficult. My goal is to take something impossibly difficult and make it into something simple, so that more people can participate and enjoy. One of us is going the wrong way.
"Sort of a much expanded version of my Kurtis Indy car proxy race."
If you say so... Except that Vintage-style cars are not intended to be racers.
"A "display class?"
It's not a "class" at all, it's a style. There's nothing to categorize, classify, regulate, control, manipulate, determine or list. Just accomplished hobbyists enjoying the part of the hobby that they happen to like best. Not everyone is a racer.
"If it isn't some sort of competition, with more than one guy doing it, it shouldn't need an A, B, C proviso."
Well, what then should it need? Do you know of another way to share an idea, without describing how it is supposed to work, or what its boundaries are? And if some of the other respondents to this post are to be believed, there is quite a few more than one person doing this sort of thing already; something to give us a common purpose and goal is quite appropriate.
"Like I said, I didn't realize you need rules to build what you want to build."
I don't. You are confusing rules with knowledge and discipline. If I wanted to make it possible for a group of people to build cars that all have similar if not identical performance, so that they could be raced together, I would apply rules. If I instead wanted to build one vintage-style car that looks and performs like an October 1968 Pro racer with a Bob Emott chassis, a Kean Kan motor and a Dave Bloom body, I would apply knowledge and discipline; rules would be of little use.
One more detail to consider; vintage pro cars clear up through 1969 had motors upon which there were no restrictions imposed. My vintage-style builds will conform to this historical fact. As a result, there will not be a sealed spec motor anywhere in sight. Just like Retro? I don't think so.
This topic is locked
) provisions. At the time it seemed that possibly a slower (spec) motor like a Mini Brute, a lower downforce body (Ferrari 612, McLaren Mk 6, etc.) and no add-on spoliers, would be a fun way to go.
, so anybody anywhere *could* race something like these.
