The state of Classic in Targa events

You can't please all the people all of the time so no matter what the organisers do with the rules there is always going to be someone happy and someone throwing the toys out of the pram. Tarmac Rally is an expensive  and dangerous sport and only has a relatively small following so putting a rule set together is always going to centre on making the entry criteria as wide as possible while remaining as safe as practical.

You can see this in the current event lists which have categories ranging from unmodified road cars in tours and speed limited groups, lightly modified cars competing at restricted speeds and through to both classic and modern cars with significant modifications and unlimited speeds competing for outright honours.

Classic cars have always been a challenge for the rule makers, there are competitors who just want to punt around in the classic they already own and those who purpose build something special with outright victory in mind.  For years the results for classic doubled up with all entrants classified in both the handicap (where an age and performance equivalence factor applied to even out the comp) and the outright result where pure speed is used to rank the winners. This system meant that if you ran your lightly modified older car you might still be in with a chance of a result in the handicap but you also got to see how you performed against the big boys and girls up the front.

A few years back Targa decided to drop the outright classic results and only have the handicap. I believe there were a number of reason for this including the safe speed of the older cars and the relatively few crews actually capable of running for outright results. There was a fair bit of push back and they relented but then split the two categories apart so you could no longer be counted in both, you chose either the main Handicap or the Classic GT for outright classification.

Since then the Classic GT has shown fairly small entrant numbers compared to the handicap (but with some serious crews and cars) and I sincerely hope this doesn't lead to the GT class being dropped again due to lack of numbers. 

When the categories were split we chose to run in the GT class, we know we can't win unless the fast cars drop out but we can still measure ourselves against the best and occasionally still sneak on the podium or post a respectable stage time.

But it's a growing problem for Classic, the cars are getting older and more expensive to build and repair, parts are harder to come by and the lure of cheap performance in Early Modern is seeing some competitors moving that way. Every year there are allowances in the rules (x-brand can have a modern block, y-brand can run wider body kit, everyone can have a dog box) some of which make it easier to build a faster car and some just make it that much further out of reach financially. But at the same time the higher performance capability in some models means the handicap system can't cope and that model gets designated as "special" and a handicap is applied regardless of the modification level.  This happened to the 240z a few years ago when a few smart operators built very fast cars and they became outright contenders as well as handicap winners (we even won a handicap event in ours) so the car has been dealt a significant handicap.  Our car is no longer competitive in either class.  Given the right budget we could obviously fix that but that's out of reach for us so for now I guess our champagne shower days are over.

So how many other competitors are there like us in the same situation?  How do we keep those people in the sport and attract new crews and cars? Do we relegate the classics to the spirited driver and lose the outright comp cars and see those crews move into modern classes or can we keep the rich history of the classics alive as a competition and not see it devolve into a tour? I'd like to think the classics have a long future as a fierce competition until the safety concerns finally shut the door on our moving motoring history class.