I have my LS1 formula now, with 75k miles on it. its pretty much in pristine condition right now, and I really want to keep it that way as I'm planning on never selling it.

With that said, I've gotten into autocrossing lately. Its really fun, but at the same time i'm worried about what kind of damage i'm doing to the car.

So I was thinking of looking into just buying another car to race, and keep the formula off the track and in perfect condition.

With that said, two questions:


1) What kind of damage exactly am i really doing to the car? Is it even anything to worry about? Really the only two things I can think of that are being adversely affected are the tires obviously, and next would be suspension components. Aside from that am I really doing any kind of damage to the car that wouldn't be occuring in just normal driving? Even on the street I like to "get on it" every so often, i certainly wouldn't say I baby it. On the other hand I dont think I abuse it, I dont push it to redline every stop light, i dont power brake around corners. These are obviously sports cars and meant to perform like this so I wouldn't say I'm abusing it by any means.

I guess if you were buying a trans am LS1, and the person told you they autocrossed it maybe once or twice every couple of months, would that bother you at all? Would you then consider it "abused"?


2) if i do go ahead and buy a different car, here's my requirements i'm thinking of

1. cheap obviously
2. rear wheel drive
3. fairly small
4. good handling to begin with

Cars i've been thinking in my head so far would be an old datsun/nissan 240z or 280z. I'd be gutting this car anyway, and wouldn't care what it looked like -- it would purely be just to autocross or road race, so condition of the body or the seats really isn't of big concern.

basically the way i'm thinking is, i can either spend $2,000 on a car and use it just to race it... or i can race my formula and end up spending way more in $2000 to repair it when things break. what do you think?

Also i thought about a 2nd gen RX7, an MR2, an older miata.... any other suggestions?