2012 Corvette Daytona Prototype

[3D FFR]

To me, this prototype reminded me a lot of the GTM. A rear engine tube chassis design using a GM power plant. But what sparked my interest is this car is to find out what kind of transaxle they are using. I wonder where they get it? Or did they build it custom?

http://www.grand-am.com/multimedia/photos.cfm

[Mike Downs]

If it's grand am, then it is probably an xtrac or emco transaxle.

[JCHRacer]

Just for reference, a few years ago when I shopped the Emco trasaxle that Grand AM cars use, they were going for roughly $60K.....and need to be rebuilt on a regular basis. Makes the Mendeolla look like one hell of a bargain.

[kabacj]

I can second Joel's comment. Emco has plenty of solutions for a mid engine car. You just need plenty of money to run them. Their solution is 100% race focused as you can imagine. You can gear it how you want for every gear. Even if the cost was not a factor it really does not make a good solution for a car that will see any street time. I really wanted to make their solution work but it's a hard sell.

John

[crash]

These are spec transaxles. Every item on a Grand Am car is speced. Supposedly this keeps costs down, but I'll tell you that I can build a car that will beat every one of those Grand Am DPs for way less than half the cost of a DP. I think Fran is doing something with this potential already.

I know Mendeola had looked into becoming a supplier to Grand Am, but they have not gone forward, and I would have to believe that one of the reasons is the amount of money that needs to be put up front to gain series approval of their equipment. I would imagine that this extra cost would also turn a $20,000 gearbox into a $40-$50k gearbox!

That said, you are going to notice more and more attention being given to venues like the 25 Hours of Thunderhill where there is a "run what ya brung" class. These days, one can build "one of the fastest cars in the world" for around the $125k mark. Faster than any DP car, faster than any Cup car, and faster than ANY production car.

Not knocking the Grand Am model as the theory is great, but the reality is that you can build much faster for much less money.