Some of you may have heard and some of you may not have heard, but we figured this would be one of the best places to write up about our W204 C300 race build for this coming American Endurance Racing season. Last year, we campaigned an E30 325i in 5 races finishing 8th overall which was an accomplishment in itself.
However, the E30 was tired at the end of the season and we started weighing our options for what to use in the 2017 season. We could have rebuilt the E30 or do something entirely different. Reality is, a lot of people build BMW race cars and there is a formula in place for popular applications. We wanted to do something different and we wanted to do something different with the intent of learning a platform 100%. We hope that the knowledge we gain from this build will benefit the entire W204 community. Enter, FCP Euro's W204 C300 race car. :y
The story of this car started in November. Kyle (who many of you may know from this board) drove down to New York City to pick up a 2010 C300 Sport with a 6 speed manual. Out of all places to find this car, we did not expect it to be in NYC. But for such an unusual car it only seemed fitting that it would be found in an unusual place. It started as a very low mileage car that also was well maintained. There were body blemishes, but it's a NYC car and the car is going to be thrashed on the track. Mint condition exterior or interior for that matter were not primary concerns.
Here are a few pics of the car the day it arrived to FCP Euro's facility:
And as race car builds go, this car didn't stay in it's stock form for too long. The first step to any race build is to strip the cars interior out. One night after regular hours a few of us worked together to strip the car down. In about 2 hours most of the interior including the carpet and headliner had been removed. To be honest, this was one of the easier cars to remove the interior from. I attribute this to the construction of the vehicle.
Building a race car is a challenge, but have fun doing it:
However, the E30 was tired at the end of the season and we started weighing our options for what to use in the 2017 season. We could have rebuilt the E30 or do something entirely different. Reality is, a lot of people build BMW race cars and there is a formula in place for popular applications. We wanted to do something different and we wanted to do something different with the intent of learning a platform 100%. We hope that the knowledge we gain from this build will benefit the entire W204 community. Enter, FCP Euro's W204 C300 race car. :y
The story of this car started in November. Kyle (who many of you may know from this board) drove down to New York City to pick up a 2010 C300 Sport with a 6 speed manual. Out of all places to find this car, we did not expect it to be in NYC. But for such an unusual car it only seemed fitting that it would be found in an unusual place. It started as a very low mileage car that also was well maintained. There were body blemishes, but it's a NYC car and the car is going to be thrashed on the track. Mint condition exterior or interior for that matter were not primary concerns.
Here are a few pics of the car the day it arrived to FCP Euro's facility:
And as race car builds go, this car didn't stay in it's stock form for too long. The first step to any race build is to strip the cars interior out. One night after regular hours a few of us worked together to strip the car down. In about 2 hours most of the interior including the carpet and headliner had been removed. To be honest, this was one of the easier cars to remove the interior from. I attribute this to the construction of the vehicle.
Building a race car is a challenge, but have fun doing it: