It’s hard to understand just how expensive it is to race cars if you’re not embedded in that world. One NASCAR driver told us it wasn’t about “a couple hundred grand” but “millions and millions just to compete” at a top level. The same goes for other series, even those that are lesser known to the general public.
Take for example the case of Scott Tucker. The semi-professional race car driver had a goal to win three SCCA Runoff class championships (that’d be the Sports Car Club of America), so he spent “well over” a million dollars building the 2001 Porsche 996 Turbo “Hurricane” that’s currently headed to auction via RM Sotheby’s, as pointed out by Jalopnik. If that seems a little too rich for your blood, you’re in luck, as the million-dollar racer is only expected to fetch between $145,000 and $205,000 when it sells on November 19 in Le Castellet, France.
Part of the reason for the huge discrepancy between build price and sale price is that Tucker financed this for a very specific set of circumstances, the SCCA STO category (Super Touring Over 3.0), which he won multiple times. This is a track racing machine with over 1,000 horsepower, carbon-fiber everything and a number of insane customizations, from the air intake on the roof to the ginormous rear wing.
The other part of the story, for those not familiar with the saga of Scott Tucker, is that the well-heeled driver is also a convicted criminal. In 2018 he was sentenced to almost 17 years in prison after being convicted of a number of racketeering charges in connection to a nationwide payday loan plot. As the Wall Street Journal reported at the time, U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel called Tucker’s actions “a scheme to extract money from people in desperate circumstances.”
This was a case of a rich scumbag financing a racing career on the backs of vulnerable Americans. That being the case, we can understand if you’re no longer interested in adding this particular car to your stable. On the other hand, dealing in high-end or at least highly customized cars can often lead you to secondhand vehicles from unsavory characters, from actual criminals to those who simply display villainous tendencies.
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