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Anyone know of good ways to raise money to buy a rally car?

24K views 59 replies 28 participants last post by  rallyxr4ti 
#1 ·
Hi. I'm 17 and I've always wanted to go rallying. The problem is im a 17 year old highschool student with little money. Does anyone know of a good way to raise money to buy a car to Rallycross in? Im just trying to get something that I can take out on weekends and have fun in, and eventually when im older and have a solid job prep it for stage rally. Thoughts?
 
#5 ·
I saved nearly every penny I had to 10 years after I graduated college before I jumped in to compete. That first year, I ant the equivalent of my salary the year I started saving to do car prep, buy suits, hotels, entry fees, trailer, upgraded vehicles, etc.

Financial planning and adherence to those plans are a must. If you hate managing your money, this hobby ain't for you.
 
#10 ·
and eventually when im older and have a solid job prep it for stage rally. Thoughts?
Beyond finding a $5 bill in the parking lot or having a large trust fund land on your lap you'll probably have to work on it. But since you are already thinking about starting small and working up to things take a look at what people are running at the rallyX, it doesn't have to be fancy. Anything light, cheap and reliable should be good for a bunch of grins. then like you said as you can get a job and regular income and then disposable income you can toss that cheap car for something more exciting or start building it into a stage car.

from the other thread it sounds like you are already out volunteering which is great.. thanks! now maybe meet some teams, convince them to let you help with service and make friends and contacts.
 
#11 ·
I have a friend with a tow company. He has loaned us impounded cars (his after no one paid the bill) for RallyX. Ran a couple events and returned. I also dirt tracked a Chevelle one year on loan from a wrecking yard. Try to get a part time job in a dealership or repair shop, even sweeping floors. Start making those connections now as you never know where they will lead.
 
#12 ·
Getting a job and finding your own source of income is how just about everybody starts. The only people who start out in the big leagues already had a large fortune in their pockets, so don't look at them. You'll likely start out in some beater 2WD car like we all did and slowly work your way up as you save money and spend it all on rally.

Being your age, get a part time job and buy some $2000 beater car to run at a rallycross. DO NOT take the thing out to "have fun" on the weekends on public roads. Keep it in a proper enviornment, take it to rallycross, autocross, and track days.
 
#13 ·
Bikini car wash!!!

[video=youtube_share;bEAAVyL0nK4]https://youtu.be/bEAAVyL0nK4[/video]
 
#14 ·
If you love driving pizza delivery is pretty good. usually you get minimum wage + tips I think i always went home with at least $40 extra in tips if not a lot more, and that was back in 96 , pizza prices have gone up so hopefully the tips have also! though totally depends on your area.


I like the idea of working in a shop more though.
 
#15 ·
Really don't need that much money to do SCCA rallyx just find the right car. While I was working on my stage car I bought a beater 1st gen MR2 for $400 just to do a few rallyx with. Sold it to a friend latter that year and its still kicking ass in stock RWD and after tires only have $600 in it. Just buy a bullet proof can thats cheap and have fun.

[video=youtube;g6moaazJjFM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6moaazJjFM[/video]
 
#16 ·
RallyCross is pretty much the cheapest motorsport you can get into. Beater car, cheap winter tires. You generally don't have to spend big money on suspensions and endlinks and bushings and crap to eek out 10ths like slalom. Plus its a whole lot more sideways. :)
 
#18 · (Edited)
rally cross is a lot of fun and can teach you basic Low speed car control skills. which really does come into play at higher speeds. You'll also meet a bunch of other enthusiasts . I was doing rally cross with a friend who ended up as my first navigator and pitching in for some of the costs.

at the higher speeds though there's a fear factor and much less time to react, and mistakes can be a lot more expensive. but the basics of car control are really the same at different speeds. picking a good line, good braking, good throttle application points, weight transfer, drift control. I can do it at 25mph or 125 mph . (well my car can only get up to 106) .

that's not to say that your car may have steady state under steer at 30 but steady state over steer at 80 . But if you learned how to deal with an oversteer car at 30, you'll have some experience to draw upon when it happens at 80. :)

everything happens slower at lower speeds, giving you more time to recover / think about what's going on.
 
#23 · (Edited)
Yo I'm 18 and your in luck because I'm about to tell you all the things I wish I knew when I was 17

These people mean well but they have forgotten what its like to be 17 and the world has changed.

I have no results nor rally car, but was able to make at a low estimate $4000 so here it goes

First things first though you keep talking about cars but cars are useless especially at our age. Have you ever bought a car before? It will probably be a POS.

If you have a full workshop you can build a kart or something to get seat time but if you have a car and no tools when it breaks guess what you'll have to deal with your ex girlfriend laughing at you and your rallying dreams.

I have a car, a 2002 Chevy Cavalier. And its currently sitting in the driveway gathering rust because I have no tools to fix it. My income, really ALL INCOME requires me to at least get place to place so I'm kinda screwed.

I might commit suicide.

Don't be me.

Buy tools before you buy the car
BUY TOOLS BEFORE YOU BUY THE CAR
BEFORE NOT AFTER

First and foremost cars are tools. If they cant be used they aren't happy.

If you don't have tools you will have to take it to a shop. You cannot afford a shop.

So BUY TOOLS DANGIT

The girl I used to like banged my best friend and one of the reasons she thought I was lame was my POS car. If I had tools my car would not be a POS. She is a cow and my friend told me she got that loosey goose anyway so its NBD i dodged a bullet but think what if she had that good good???????

Do you want your crush to bang your best friend? No?

BUY TOOLS

On to the advice...

1. Don't move out of your house

Where do you think the money went? Not a rally car. It is just as hard as they say it I man, and if you don't believe me it will be worse for you.

2. Screw sponsorship

Ok so sponsors are hard to get and keep we all know that but the real reason I say screw sponsorships is because you are 17 and probably male. The people who accept or deny sponsorship proposals are usually at least in there 30s. Aka they are the establishment. The establishment hates youth, hates rally, and definitely hates them together. Just look at how much money is floating around rally America and you will see I speak the truth. Also the establishment LOVES money and your asking them to give it up. So like naaah brahhh

3. Jobs

Apply to as many places as you can, make a list of places you applied to and CALL EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THEM EVERY WEEK. Be as annoying as you can. Nobody is gonna say he really wants this job too much, were not hiring him. You want them to know your face when they pull up your application.

Nobody will call you back. You are 17. You are dirt. The establishment hates you remember? You have to make them feel your worth the investment and they wont think that unless they can run you into the ground and get the absolute max out of you. (Because you are dirt remember?) Putting in an application and doing nothing is not max effort.

4. Old Bastids (EASY MODE)

Old people are king kong dude. They will expect you to be Satan at first. But since you are 17 and dirt the bar for you is set low. As long as you show them your more of the Degrassi type teenager instead of Boys in da Hood, they will love you. They don't have much longer and don't understand inflation so they will over pay you. They also know what its like to be young so they don't mind over paying you when they do. Since they're old they will probably waaay overestimate how hard the work they have is. Its summer bro, pass out some fliers and sheeet.

Everyone wants a nice yard but nobody wants to put the work in.

5. Saving habits
The truth is its not that hard at all to make money at our ages its hard to keep it. Work on that. I'm an awful saver so I got nothing for you dude ask your parents or something. But I do know that if I could have only saved some of the money I received in my life I'd be rallying no problem. And I'm still not rallying. So this is a big one. Learn to say no. If you don't have the nut sack to say no to your friends you don't have the sack to keep a rally car flat out through a 5- over a crest.

Hit me up on facebook search Yengi Lado I don't use fourms all that much if you want more advice. I'm the black kid, but my age on facebook might be kinda weird.

It would be nice to have more friends around my age into rally cars.

If you do all of this, you should have the funds to do what you wanna do. Now you just have to figure the rest out.

BTW theees another rally fourm called Rally Anarchy that has tons of good info. (Anarchists, this is my payback for not giving me used car advice muahahahahahahahaha you get more of us!!!!!!)
 
#30 · (Edited)
I will go back to school eventually but I need to do it in a way that is sustainable.
I went to college at like 15. I was not ready for it and now I have anxiety problems. I'm working on a smarter sustainable way to continue my education. College at 15 wasn't sustainable. That's why I moved out of my house, I need to live a little (and maaaaaybe try to rally I ain't givin up yet) first. That way I can go with no regrets or "I should be doing this first".

I see a pattern. Slow and steady wins the race. Hell Chris D's golf could have probably been described as slow and steady with his 115hp golf (slow) with good suspension and low weight (steady).

Heck even Vanlamdinghams beginner car choice, a Volvo 240, can be described this way with 160hp TURBO (Slow), and a what, 115 inch wheelbase was it (steady)???

But enough about the life theories of an 18 year old I'm pretty sure I've put plenty of annoying into this fourm already.
 
#31 ·
The trick is to accept that motorsports is not supposed to be easily afforded or something that can be done without substantial resources, and rally is the ultimate embodiment of this idea.

Once you embrace that, you then need to determine how to best maximize your financial resources and time and then determine what other things that consume those resources and how valuable they are.

If your under 25, put every ounce of time and energy into getting a great job that pays good money and only allocate rally resources to saving, volunteering at events, and crewing for teams so you can learn the true costs of competition.

The sweet spot for competing and participating in rally is 25-30/35 and then 45/50+, basically, when you should be able to have a good job/income without necessarily having things like family or house payment to consume your resources (time and or money). Then from 30/35 through mid to late 40s is time to focus on the career, family, house, and what not. Once that is all established, if you are fortunate enough to be able to generate enough resources (again, money, but also time), its time to get back to competing again.

If your 17 or 18, this isn't what you want to hear, but its the truth. So if your in that age bracket, get a dirt bike or a rallycross beater for your racing fix and work your butt off, either in school or in getting started on a career path (just because people talk about education, doesn't mean everyone needs a bachelors/masters degree to be happy, the world needs electricians and plumbers just as much as it needs an engineer these days, both career paths are capable of generating enough income to compete/have a good life for people that are driven) and if that career path includes education, do everything possible to graduate with as little debt as possible (you can't imagine how much it sucks to make good money but have half of each check going to student loans).

Once you have the job and the income, then figure out what you can afford and set your competition goals that way, maybe its a year of saving and then a year of competing, maybe its 1 local and 1 tow away race, maybe to make it big and its 5+ events a year.

But realize this is only ever going to be a hobby for 99.9% of people in the world, maybe you can get lucky enough and someone will someday subsidize some of the cost for you, but probably not, so figure out how to support yourself in the sport, work towards that, then worry about the car.
 
#38 · (Edited)
This thread has now 100% gone to shit.


Bottom line, there's no "cheap" way to race unless you happen to have a large sum of money. If you honestly want to get close to racing, but not have a racing budget, get into sim racing. Nobody is going to "make it big" in American rally on hopes and dreams. People need to get realistic, get a good education or find a good skilled trade that will make you lots of money to go REGIONAL racing. Have your fun that way. I was a 17 year old kid with a dream to race cars, I didn't start racing until I was 26. There is no way a high school kid could do anything outside of running their local regional event. I maybe pulled several grand in a summer job, but most of that is what I survived on for room/food in college, I got my school paid for through scholarship (if you're not as lucky then you're stuck with student debts), came home in the summer with double digits in my bank account and fumes in my gas tank to get me to my first day of my summer job. A running cost for a weekend, if you bare bones it, is something like $2000. The math isn't hard.
 
#39 ·
This thread has now 100% gone to shit.


Bottom line, there's no "cheap" way to race unless you happen to have a large sum of money. If you honestly want to get close to racing, but not have a racing budget, get into sim racing. Nobody is going to "make it big" in American rally on hopes and dreams. People need to get realistic, get a good education or find a good skilled trade that will make you lots of money to go REGIONAL racing. Have your fun that way. I was a 17 year old kid with a dream to race cars, I didn't start racing until I was 26. There is no way a high school kid could do anything outside of running their local regional event. I maybe pulled several grand in a summer job, but most of that is what I survived on for room/food in college, I got my school paid for through scholarship (if you're not as lucky then you're stuck with student debts), came home in the summer with double digits in my bank account and fumes in my gas tank to get me to my first day of my summer job. A running cost for a weekend, if you bare bones it, is something like $2000. The math isn't hard.
DVW was competing RA 'national' championship while he was technically in high school. But, his family also has deep pockets and deep connections in motorsports in general. That toterhome though!

Seriously, LexusDuder, I wanna come to the big apple and buy you a beer! You got this all figured out. Wish I had when I was in school instead of hookin' up w/ Uncle Sam and saving money. What a waste of several years. And on top of that, I even sold the rally truck to go to school afterwards. Now look at me.. I just assist with organizing rallies and volunteer my life away. *les sigh*

oh, and do sim racing. :)
 
#40 ·
Again, Dillon's family has money. Shit, his Fiesta is a beast of a machine but if an R2 fiesta costs $70k turnkey, granted his didn't need homoligated parts, but still was a lot better spec'd vehicle.

But the biggest way to save on rally is having your own tolls and doing a lot of work/fabrication yourself. I built my own car but only paid to have the cage work and skid plate done. But a set of basic tools is $100 from Craftsman, most other things like bearing presses, ball joint kits, spring compressors can all be rented for free from a local auto parts store. Get yourself a good jack that lifts 20"+, get some good 6 ton jack stands to hold your car high off the ground. But a welder that's not a Lowe's/Home Depot/Harbor Freight one, get a GOOD entry level 140 model. A drill press, chop saw, work bench, vise, 20 ton press is always nice but not 100% needed, angle grinder, cordless and corded drill/impact. Get GOOD LIGHTING in your garage.

The reality with rally tools though. Thing what the service guys have that work on your car, if you just look up pictures of a WRC service guy's tool kit, get all those tools, you can fix just about anything on a car.
 
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