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(The following is an account of the history of the vehicle type and racing category in which SWSE participates, as first posted by Kevin Singleton on the online forum.)

Car History

In 1993 I decided to sell 50% of my business, Smart Racing Products, to Purdy Motors S.A. of San Jose, Costa Rica. Two brothers who were the principals in the company became my partners and financial backing to build a car manufacturing company in Southern California. I had a very successful business at the time building engines for Toyota support teams in the U.S., Central America and South Africa. We were already building cars, we had just finished a Toyota Celica GTS car for Purdy Motors, and a car for the Baja 1000 but we were looking to do something much bigger.

In Central America racing is second to soccer. There was huge interest in racing but the reality was that it took money to race. The wealthy locals did the racing and the ones with the biggest wallets dominated. My partners were those guys. To put it in perspective, Purdy Motors was the sole importer of Toyota cars and trucks to all of Central America. The parts department in San Jose alone did 750K U.S. a day. These two brothers raced against guys who drove the car they were going to race to the track with their tool box in the trunk.

One of the brothers and I came up with the idea to do a one make spec series where everyone that could afford the car would have an equal chance at being competitive. A level playing field. That was the day it all started.

The car was originally designed as an open cockpit, closed wheel sports racing car powered by a Kawasaki motorcycle engine. Purdy thought they had a deal on engines but it fell apart in the eleventh hour. After some quick thinking and research, I came back with the idea and some sketches for a car based around the 1985-1989 Toyota MR2. I was very familiar with the engine having been involved in Toyota Atlantic and the cars were holding up real well on the highway. The total units sold by Toyota over the years and the number still in operation assured us that there would be no shortage of parts availability. At that point we had no idea how many OEM parts we would use or what the final pricing would be. We had a target of around 18K.

I flew home with an order for 40 cars and a basic idea. I immediately hired Chris Willes, an engineer that I had worked with at Nissan Performance Technology. Together with a talented group of people we designed and built the first proto-type and tooling car SP-94-001 in about four months. It cost $123,000.00 dollars U.S. to build. We immediately put the car on the track and started testing. Most of the changes that came from the initial testing were related to simplifying the car for production. The roll hoop got taller but most everything else remained unchanged for this first production run.

The cars were built and shipped ten at a time, unassembled in containers to Costa Rica. Unassembled? they wanted the cars shipped unassembled to avoid the high import duty on vehicles (100%) at the time. A brilliant idea at the time became the biggest blunder of all time. While we were hard at work building the cars, the marketing group at Purdy had built the series with full sponsorship from Marlboro Central America. The Marlboro Formula SP was to be a ten race series in six countries in Central and South America. It was a done deal, lots of $$ had been spent and it was going to be huge. We had countries from all over the region wanting to get involved. We had the potential to sell hundreds of cars. Key word here was HAD! By importing the cars as parts, the cars technically did not exist. If they were shipped out of the country as planned for event #2, it would cost the owners of the cars full duty to bring them back in ( around 18K each). The #%$^ hit the fan but there was nothing that could be done. These two were powerful in the government, donating big money to both sides in the election, but they couldn't get them to budge on this one. The series became a one country deal. Marlboro stayed involved and I started looking for the next place to race the cars.

It's late July 1994 and the first race in Costa Rica. The season starts late down there because of the rainy season. Almost opposite of the seasons up here. By this time we had three containers in the country and twenty-eight cars ready for the first race. All were sold long before the first event. The rest of the parts were held for spares. We still had ten cars to ship. I arrived a few days early to check out the cars and do some press stuff that had been set up. This weekend was a huge deal for them. Months of planning, launch parties, hell, they had the President and First Lady of Costa Rica at the unveiling earlier in the year. All the national racing heroes had rides and all with big sponsors. I was used to seeing one or two cars and lots of parts, but it was unbelievable to see twenty-eight cars all lined up and painted ready to race. I didn't know whether to be proud or scared senseless. We had put a lot of miles on the car and felt pretty good about it's reliability, but you never know what's going to happen when 28 Latinos get the green flag. I mean that with the utmost respect. They race like it's to the death.

It didn't take long to play out. The first turn of the first race and I saw the bottoms of at least two cars and one went over another and clean out of the track. They went to turn one and no one would brake. Luckily everyone was OK and they lined up what was left for a restart. Things calmed down and it turned out to be a good race. There was lots of carnage and lots to be learned about the cars.

I headed home with a lot of notes, ideas for changes and photos of pirated bodywork. We didn't even make it past the first event and they had already splashed the body work and produced their own molds. It became real apparent when the first parts order after the first event should have included lots of bodywork and there was none. There was not enough in the country at that point to repair all the damage.

My partners had already decided that cars and parts were going to originate in Costa Rica, not in the U.S. They made me an offer to move the company to Costa Rica and come down and live and run the business there. I gave it some serious thought. I still liked these guys but realized that I couldn't trust them. I waited a while and then told them that I wasn't interested.

From that point on the relationship went down hill. It was clear that their intention was to take the company south with or without me. Without financial support our existence depended on launching the cars in the U.S. We still had ten cars to deliver to Costa Rica, but they were going to wait. I set aside the ten chassis plates 31 through 40 and we began to assemble two cars that would go to the Long Beach Grand Prix weekend in April 1995. We had a booth inside the expo with a car and another under Yokohama's tent in the Formula Atlantic paddock. I had no idea what people would think of the car and I had no idea of the politics involved in creating a series to race them as "spec cars" in the U.S.

One thing that Long Beach is known for is big crowds of 300K people. When it was all said and done, we had over 500 people take the time to fill out a form to receive further information as it became available. We sold both cars the first day.

Long Beach in 1995 was a very important moment in the history of this car. The company had geared up to build a lot of cars and parts. I didn't like hiring good people and then releasing them when things slowed down. The first big batch of cars was built and we didn't have much to show for it. We didn't charge enough for the cars we had built and the parts business wasn't strong enough to float the company. We were in a race to get on our own feet before the power struggle for the company came to a head. It took everything we had to get to Long Beach. It was a good thing those two cars sold because we needed the money. They sold for around 25K each.

The sale of those two cars was critical to our existence, but equally important were the key people who saw the car over those three days. We knew we had a great car and the response from the crowd at the race only continued to confirm it. The reality though is that without a defined place to race the car you have nothing.

I don't mean to spend so much time on this one event, but it was "the" moment. One thing that sticks in my head was the number of people who approached me and said "the SCCA will never allow this car to exist". These people were involved in the Spec Racer program at the time. The Spec Racer was going through a very controversial engine change program at the time and a lot of customers were very unhappy. Honestly, I didn't have a clue or cared what was going on with the Spec Racer program. I had driven one as a comparison at one of our test sessions, but that was the extent of my knowledge. I thought the cars were apples and oranges.

Nick Craw headed up the SCCA and more importantly SCCA Enterprises, the builder of the Spec Racer. It didn't take long for him to learn about our car and the threat it posed. The Spec Racer program was facing a mutiny and the last thing he needed was another spec car.

By the time he learned of the car, it was already homologated as a C Sports Racer, so he wasn't going to keep it out altogether, but he could limit it to regional status. Regional racing is fine but a car constructor cannot survive on those numbers alone. I had my sights set much higher all along. I had seen the cars run as a spec class in Central America and I wanted to see a semi-pro series in the U.S.

One of the key people that I hooked up with following the Long Beach weekend was Bob Swenson. Bob was the Southwest CSR for Spec Racer, but he was going against the grain. He was creating his own series for the Renault powered cars. If that didn't make him enemy number one with the SCCA by itself, he wanted to create a series for our car on the west coast. He started his own sanctioning body IRRA, and put together a schedule of events at Willow Springs. I'll be honest, this wasn't exactly what I had in mind, but you have walk before you run, and I needed to sell cars. We had customers ready to pull the trigger but not without a place to race.

Bob gets credit for the first series for the cars in the U.S. He loved the cars and was a great promoter. He gave us valuable input on the design. Many of his ideas would be worked into the car as time went on. The cockpit bars were Bob's idea. These bars were on all U.S.-spec cars. The cars in Central America did not have these bars. Bob became our first dealer (southwest), and ordered many of the first cars sold.

One of Bob's close friends and one of our first customers was Dwayne Anderson. I had met Dwayne long before this when I worked at Toyota Racing Development and Dwayne was running his Atlantic program. Dwayne took a strong interest in the cars and shared my vision of a national spec series. Dwayne became the ambassador of these cars and his enthusiasm and guidance throughout the years was vital. I could not have done it without him. Dwayne ordered two cars and with his son Mike driving quickly learned the ins and outs of the design. The Anderson's became our un-official factory test team.

At this point in time you had two choices on where you could compete with one these cars. You could run the IRRA series at Willow, or you could run C-sports racer in SCCA regional competition. Car sales were pretty steady and we were beginning to set up dealers around the country. We had momentum, but some of the worst days were still to come.

We built a total of 105 chassis between 1994-2000.

001-040. Central America. Not all were ever built up to complete cars as some were sold as re-placement parts.
The easiest way to identify one of these cars is to look for cockpit bars ( next to your head ) & the mounting points. None of these cars had them. They also did not have a welded in floor under the driver. Floor skins were .060 thick. No EFI. All had Weld Wheels, Koni shocks, old style body including the nose. I know some people down there were trying to sell cars back into the US market, but I doubt that anyone will come across one. All were built off of the original tooling. All were built at Smart Performance Products Inc. in Vista, CA at the original shops.

041-074 These cars were built at Smart Performance Products Inc. in Vista, CA at the original shops on the original tooling. These cars were sold in the US to US teams and dealers. I'm trying to finish a complete list of the cars by number and original owner. These cars were originally sold with Weld Wheels, Koni Shocks, No EFI, ATL Fuel Cells. These cars had updates on the chassis like diagonal bars next to the driver, cockpit bars and welded in floor panel under the driver. The engines had Wiseco pistons, Supercharged MR2 head gaskets, Web Cams. These cars should all have ID plates on the front bulkhead.

75001-( I believe 98024 , I'm still working on that )

These cars were built by World Sports Racer Inc. in Vista, CA. I opened this company following a complete exit from Smart Performance Products Inc.. I'll go into more detail on that in my history section. This shop was a very cool 11,000 sq ft shop about 5 miles from SPP. These cars were built on evolution 2 tooling. We built one car to drawings and tooled from it. These cars were very straight. We solved a lot of production headaches at the same time and generally built a much better car. On the track it made no difference in performance. Along the way in production of these cars we went to BBS wheels, Carrera Shocks (version 1), Fuel Safe cells, Better rod ends, high temp shift cables, big rear brakes, and a few other things I can't remember. Engines were improved with JE pistons, Update on TRD rod bearings, a little higher compression 12.4 - 1. We were still fighting problems with cam lobes & shims.

99025-10531 Somewhere along here the cars were sold by SVC ( Specialized Vehicle Constructors LLC ) the company formed by Vern and I following the sale. At the time there was a large inventory and many of these chassis were built at WSR. We moved the company to Seattle and maintained a shop in Temecula that built some components and bodywork. Most of these cars were sold with fuel injection and all the latest updates.