Vintage Car Driving Experience – Why Not?

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What can we say? At Xtreme Xperience, we’re about as car-crazy as they come. 

Not only are we nuts about everything with four wheels and an engine, but we’ve also built an entire company around this passion for sharing the amazing world of motorsports and speed with other enthusiasts all over the country. Car enthusiasts happen to be a pretty vocal bunch, and every time we go to a new track in a new city, we get an earful of ideas from our customers that range from completely insane to completely attainable. 

As an entrepreneurial organization, our goal is to always push the boundaries and foster a culture of innovation. In fact, our most recent endeavor, Open Road Supercar Driving Tours, was the brainchild of one of our founders. Prior to launching Open Road, our entire team engaged in deep discussion around the challenges and realities of operating such an experience, and eventually came to the conclusion that Open Road could indeed be a reality. 

One of the most common requests we get while on the road is whether we’ll consider offering a classic vehicle experience that’s similar to our modern supercar experience. After all, it’s not like modern supercars are the first vehicles to go around to go fast on a track!

So, what would it take to actually launch a classic vehicle experience? Let’s dive in.

The Golden Era

These days, the classic car market is absolutely bonkers. There’s never been more interest in the world of classic car restorations, and full-blown restomods that defy all logic. Why exactly is the classic car market so strong these days? One word: nostalgia. 

Vehicles like Mustangs, Corvettes, GTOs, and Camaros were all birthed in a muscle car era. At a time when America was in fact deeply divided, we were unified in our love of all things automotive. From the Volkswagen Bus to the fire breathing Chevelle SS, the 1960s and very early 1970s felt like a free and somewhat lawless time.

As America climbed its way out of the fuel crisis of the 1970s, muscle cars were on their way out. Although vehicles like the Camaro, Mustang, and Challenger are still around today, they didn’t exactly have the easiest road. Once fuel economy standards were put in place, the technology to make horsepower without gulping down fuel wasn’t quite there yet. It would take another 40 years for muscle cars to really have their renaissance. 

Vintage cars, especially sports cars and muscle cars, evoke those nostalgic feelings from a period of time when things were just a hell of a lot less restricted. This means that today, people are willing to throw down big bucks to have a slice of their youth. 

The Downside

Although the muscle cars of the past were definitely performance focused machines, running these types of vehicles on a regular track schedule would present some serious problems for our team. 

First and foremost is the pressing concern of safety. Modern supercars and sports cars are designed to be extremely crash resistant, and include a bevy of airbags and driver safety technology that helps keep novice drivers getting into trouble. On the other hand, vintage and classic cars have no such technology. Their structures are not built to withstand crashes as well as cars today, nor do they have any sort of driver safety technology. This presents a problem for a company like Xtreme Xperience, since safety is always a priority at every single event.

Modern vehicles are also just more reliable than older, classic cars. Muscle cars ran a very clever device known as a carburetor, and although these carburetors are simplistic, they can be problematic in many conditions. The rest of the vehicle is also just not made to be beat up on at regular track days! 

Granted, there are plenty of Trans Am race cars out there from the Golden Era of muscle cars, but the same issues persist. Driving one of these classic muscle cars around a track is not a task for the inexperienced or the faint of heart.

Classic Car Dreams

Ah, but there is a way to get this done. How come you may ask? The world of restomods. 

Over the last decade or so, the process of restoring classic vehicles has taken on a brand new twist. Some of the best builders in the country take classic muscle car shells, and completely upgrade everything from the chassis to the suspension and transmission to offer a more modern driving experience with all the attitude of a classic car.

This has the benefit of modernizing some things that make a classic car difficult to run at our events. Modern fuel injected engines, more reliable transmission options and suspension systems that are designed to handle would all go a long way to making a classic car experience more tangible.

To make this kind of dream a reality, we need to work with a shop who specializes in restomod vehicles, and then boost the cost of events to cover these expensive machines. There are plenty of bad restorations out there, and good restorations do not come cheap! Since these machines need to run at events all over the country, there needs to be some level of reliability and only a specialty shop can deliver that. 

In addition, we would also need to institute a more thorough safety check program to ensure that all the operating systems of these restored vehicles are in peak condition before every race. Lastly, this would necessitate additional training, as the handling and other driver input systems on a restored or classic vehicle can be drastically different from modern cars.

Would you?

So, what do you think? Would it be worth it for Xtreme Xperience to take on the challenge of launching classic car xperience for the masses?

You know us for supercar events that range from hardcore track days to supercar tours through some of the most breathtaking landscapes in the United States. If you know us well, you know that we’re always down for a challenge, and well, you just never know what kind of madness we’re cooking up here in HQ. What we do know is that the demand is there and that bug for nostalgia is stronger than ever before with our fans. 

Who knows, maybe one day you too can be screaming around the track in a race-prepped restomod!