I love the Nürburgring 24-Hour race and have been lucky enough to see it in person once. It was for this reason that I was so pumped to hear that a team of scrappy enthusiasts was planning to bring a Renault Twingo to race and had, somehow, gotten far along in the approvals process. It sounds like it ain’t happening, and it stinks.
There are going to be a lot of takes about this, I fear, and a lot of finger-pointing. This Morning Dump today is going to take up the cause of the Twingo, which is awesome, while also pointing out that having the Twingo there was probably a bad idea. This is one of those situations where everyone is wrong, and everyone is right.
Are cars more expensive because of safety features? The safety experts say no. Is GM going to kill the Bolt in order to build a boring crossover? Yes, but don’t get mad. Will I lower the temperature with a Škoda post? Absolutely.
This Is Modern Racing
There is no rule that says a giraffe can’t play basketball, or a dog, or whatever. Show up to the court with one, though, and things are going to get weird. Some absolutely heroic lunatics under the banner of Rauh Racing decided they’d try to enter a slow, unsporting Renault Twingo hatchback in the legendary and grueling 24-hour race that happens every year at the Nürburging.
We wrote about it last year because it was too awesome to ignore. Unlike a lot of major races, the Nürburgring 24 has always had a bit of a different spirit. If you can qualify it, you can run it, which explains how a team has been running a race-prepped Dacia Logan for years alongside an Open Manta.
The laps these local teams run can be over 13 minutes long, which is almost double what someone like Max Verstappen ran in a GT3 car. The idea of a Dacia Logan on track with factory teams and factory drivers is hilarious, and definitely one of the major differentiators for the race. The N24 is a global event, but it’s also a big deal for the local community, which has a long history of supporting this race and making it happen.
So, it was with horror this morning that I learned, via a statement from Rauh Racing, that they were encouraged to give up their quixotic chase:
Over the past months, the framework that originally made this project possible has changed. In direct communication, the organiser made it clear that cars like ours are no longer wanted at the 24h Nürburgring. We were further informed that our participation is now subject to “unpredictable factors” and additional, non‑transparent considerations. Taken together, those messages leave very little room for interpretation.
Preparing properly for the 24h Nürburgring 2026 would require committing a high five‑figure budget in the coming months, with no external financial backing, on top of the time constraints and mental load that come with running this project alongside regular employment. Committing that level of money, time, and health to an outcome thatis no longer clearly tied to preparation, or regulatory compliance would be a gamble we cannot justify.
That sucks. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s as simple as being mad at one person or, really, anyone. This is symptomatic of many larger issues.
Should We Be Mad At The Organizers?
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Knowing Germans and having dealt with the organizing body ADAC before, I’ve got a decent guess about what might have happened here. I’ve asked ADAC for comment, but I don’t think it’s coming soon, given the timing, but I’ll update when I hear back.
If you watched the Gran Turismo movie, you’d have seen the protagonist flip over, kill a spectator, and injure multiple people during a crash at one of the shorter races on the Nürburgring Nordschleife. This was a real event, and the film does a good job of capturing how terrible it was. It’s a unique track, and the uniqueness, combined with the ever increasing speed, has created too many potential bad outcomes. That crash happened more than a decade ago, and the fast cars have only gotten faster, whereas the slow cars haven’t.
“90% of the problem is the GT3 cars are too quick now; they’re massively too quick, and there’s going to be a horrific accident,” longtime Nürburging racer and former resident Robb Holland told me. “The speed differential between the GT3 cars and the slower class cars is just too great. It’s been an issue for a long time, but it’s finally been coming to a head over the last few years.”
Holland knows this personally, as he was on a team with a fast car at the ‘Ring that, unfortunately, got caught up in a crash with a slower one.
The implication from Rauh Racing is that the organizing body doesn’t want the slow cars there anymore, but that some of them are effectively “grandfathered” in. That sounds right and, sadly, it’s also probably fair.
Where the organizers screwed up is in not discouraging Rauh Racing from the beginning. If your policy is “no more super slow cars,” then allowing someone to believe it was technically possible really is just inviting this kind of issue, and isn’t fair to the enthusiasts wanting to run the Twingo.
Can We Blame The Rich Guys?
Wealthy individuals have always been a part of racing, but it’s gotten so much more prominent, and the N24, in particular, is a good target for hobbyists with Steve McQueen fantasies. Even as a high-level ‘gentleman’ racer, your odds of even getting on a top-level prototype team at Le Mans are small. If you’re merely a decent driver, the chance that you’ll win is basically nil.
There are no prototypes at the N24, which means that a reasonably good driver has a chance of taking the whole thing if they can spend the money to get on a team with a bunch of pros. Just look at last year’s entry list. There are enough Rolex watches there to fill the damn Twingo.
This also creates another issue as, in addition to a few very slow cars and a few very fast ones, you now have a bunch of drivers of varying skill. Unlike Le Mans or Daytona–tracks where you have a lot of room and a lot of laps to get used to slower cars–there is no room at the ‘Ring, and you may only encounter even a slow car twice in one stint, and probably in a different location than you saw them last.
Even worse, the straights, as they are, sit in between dozens of turns. You have to pass in corners, which is hard, and made way worse by a new team in a slower car with a driver who may act in an unpredictable way.
However, without the rich drivers, there is no race. You need them, and the alternative is worse.
Should We Blame The Manufacturers?
I’ve had many interesting conversations with Jim Glickenhaus, the car builder and team owner, but one of the wildest things I heard was at one of his last N24 races. This was more than a decade ago, and he was complaining about being ‘a David in a world of Goliaths.’
Glickenhaus is, by all accounts, a very wealthy man. In most rooms he walks into, he is not a David. At the same time, he is not a Ferrari, Audi, or Porsche. A public company can spend an order of magnitude more than nearly any individual. It may be a K-shaped economy, but someone like Glickenhaus is grassroots compared to an automaker.
They should probably make the cars slower, right? That would be a solution. But it would be a solution for exactly one track, because nowhere else do you have this problem.
Rauh Racing also mentions this issue:
In a lot of series, most of the grid is made up of very wealthy entrants for whom racing is primarily an expensive hobby, alongside factory or factory‑supported programmes. Between those poles, only a handful of genuine privateer teams remain.
Those few teams are often presented as proof that “everyone is welcome” and that the grid is still diverse – the small heroes in the background of the big show. In reality, this picture is becoming harder to sustain. Outside a small number of private operations that are used to support this narrative, there is not much left of the broad grassroots motorsport that is still invoked in marketing around the 24h Nürburgring. This is rarely addressed publicly, and for the very small teams who are affected, speaking up is risky, because there are only a few major organisers and events to race with.
I don’t think they’re wrong.
What Can Be Done?
Outside of the 24 Hours of LeMons, this is an issue in this country as well. Whenever a grassroots organization starts up and gets traction (WRL, Champ Car, et cetera), the money shows up, and it starts being professional, which squeezes out the people who made it great in the first place.
I see two ways this could be made better for the Twingo team. First, ADAC should get rid of all the slow cars and create a shorter race that maybe runs on the Friday before the 24. Could you imagine a 6-hour Fun Cup with Logans, Twingos, Espaces, and whatever weirdo cars people want to bring? It could still be a part of the 24 experience, and also address the reasonable safety concerns.
The other option is more immediate. Although it’s been set up as an endurance car, there is one place where the pros and the joes can still race with a fairly open rule book: Pikes Peak. It just so happens our friend Robb is on the Board of Directors for the PPIHC. Would they be open to a Twingo?
“Absolutely.”
So, if you’re reading this Rauh Racing, maybe consider heading to Colorado.
Don’t Just Blame Safety Features For Higher Costs
For all the talk of affordability, it is a convenient narrative to blame safety features, and it’s true to some extent. Automakers need to do well on tests like the ones the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) performs in order to compete. Cars are also getting heavier, and that makes keeping everyone safe even harder.
In a new post, the IIHS President David Harkey says you’re wrong to blame only safety features for higher costs:
The average new vehicle is expensive, and that’s actually a problem for safety. The higher prices go, the longer Americans hold on to older vehicles that lack the crash protection and safety systems of more recent models.
But safety features aren’t the main thing pushing up prices. Buyers are paying more for convenience features such as hands-free power liftgates, puddle lights and automatically retracting mirrors. Size is also a major factor: Americans continue to gravitate toward larger vehicles. The popular Ford F-150 pickup starts at $39,330, with higher trim levels starting at more than $70,000.
Even those who buy less expensive models often choose to load them with optional features that have nothing to do with safety. The Mazda 3 I mentioned above will cost you $36,740 if you choose the Turbo Premium Plus instead of the lowest trim level. Among other things, the extra money will get you more horsepower, special wheels, a leather interior and a Bose sound system. You can add even more optional features and run the price up to nearly $40,000. Personally, I like my heated seats, but I count on my car’s seat belts, airbags and automatic emergency braking to keep me and my family safe.
What about… heated airbags?
Don’t Be Mad At GM About This One Thing
Cancelling the OG Chevy Bolt was a bad decision, and everyone at GM knows it. They had an affordable EV that got discontinued in order to bring out another affordable EV that was too slow to the market and not quite the same thing.
To GM’s credit, they rectified this and brought back a refreshed version of the Bolt. GM was also extremely clear at the time they said they’d be bringing it back that this was a short-lived move and that something would replace it, eventually, although what that will be is a little unclear. Another Bolt? A different cheap EV?
Because of tariffs, China, USMCA, and all that, GM desperately needs to bring its popular Buick Envision production back to the United States from China. Where’s it going to be built?
You can probably guess, but Bloomberg confirms it:
General Motors Co. plans to move production of its next-generation Buick Envision compact SUV, which is currently built in China, to a plant in Kansas in 2028, a sign of the pressure automakers are under to reshore output of vehicles sold in the US.
The Detroit-based manufacturer also said Thursday it will likely end output of its all-electric Chevrolet Bolt that’s built in the same plant in about a year and a half.
GM’s move is a response to policy decisions by President Donald Trump, whose tariffs have made it more expensive to import vehicles from China. At the same time, the Trump administration has eliminated $7,500 tax incentives for electric vehicles, making them less affordable for car buyers.
This is logical, and it’s not even sad if GM finds a way to sell a sub-$30k-equivalent EV after this run of the Chevy Bolt is done. If they don’t, then you can get mad.
Ohhhh Škoda
My favorite British car award is the What Car? Award because in American English, the idea of What Car? has a very “I’m sure Egg is a very nice person” back-handed vibe to it.
What Car? also gives out roughly 9,000 awards, which is probably a good idea both from a marketing and a revenue standpoint. Either way, the Škoda Superb Estate has won the Estate Car of the Year award for an unprecedented eighth time in a row.
Commenting on the Superb’s performance, What Car? Editor Steve Huntingford said: “There can be few families whose needs the Škoda Superb Estate wouldn’t satisfy. It’s absolutely immense inside, both for passengers and luggage. Yet it doesn’t feel overly big from behind the wheel, because it combines tidy handling with a comfortable ride – particularly if you specify the optional adaptive suspension.”
Go Škoda!
What I’m Listening To Today
Hell yeah, it’s Kraftwerk doing “The Robots.”
The Big Question
Where should the Twingo race?
Top photo: Falken Racing, Rauh Racing
Mike, we appear to have similarly eclectic taste in music. My lady is younger and moved down after spending her life single in Manhattan. This is relevant because she has seen a lot of cool bands that I was unfamiliar with, even as a music nerd and former Music Biz pro. She took me to see a band named Future Islands that I am of the opinion you would really dig. They have a retro New Wave and German synth hybrid vibe with a touch of Yello mixed in. Their tracks are good but man, their live show is something to behold. Their lead singer really over-the-top sells it and you feel like you have been transported back in time without being kitschy.
FTR, I have no affirmation with the band and actually had to ask her what their name was because I keep thinking it’s something like Happy Dreams, Glorious Days, or Enchanting Distance.
You’ve heard the BADBADNOTGOOD soul-crooner reworking of “Seasons” right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWyJEhMHFdM
It’s got a nice Motown sound to it and I dig it. Thanks
*affiliation, not affirmation
It’s true you don’t need to buy an expensive vehicle to get a safe one, which was often the case 30 years ago when IIHS testing became prevalent. And even expensive vehicles weren’t necessarily safer as the tests showed. But the features section in the IIHS post reads like a deflection. Feature creep is common but blaming it on puddle lights sounds like “people can’t stop buying flat-screen TVs!”
Certainly not advocating for rolling back vehicle safety, but not like the costs are just absorbed by the manufacturer.
Twingo race at Road America would be a blast as long as the competitors were a like class.
I honestly don’t buy the speed differential argument at all. When you enter a multiclass race on a narrow circuit that, let’s face it, wasn’t really designed for it, you have to adapt your driving style to suit. You have to be aware that you could run up on someone pretty quickly at any moment (and, for backmarkers, you need to keep an eye on your mirrors). I don’t think it’s such an unreasonable ask.
I think if ADAC were to police driver fatigue and aggression more strictly, they could eliminate the crashes that are being blamed on the speed differential.
Dear IIHS:
Impose a severe weight & size penalty for insurance premiums, and this problem will slowly correct itself.
In a weird way they might already do that. Insurance companies would absolutely raise costs on a model it it cost them more in claims. If we assume that is true then either:
1) on average heavier cars do have higher premiums. Or
2) bigger/heavier cars are not significantly more dangerous than smaller cars.
Man I would love to dig into the data they have on similar yet different sized cars. I imagine we could compare the Ford escape, explorer, and expedition data and solve this once and for all.
Where should there be a Twingo race?
Paris, naturally.
Twingo Le Mans?
The ultimate cafe race.
If Twingos are the Mods. What do you suggest as the Rockers? Something Citroen or perhaps Peugeot? I vote for 2CV in Dakar 4 wheel drive mode to deal with those pesky kerbs
That would be perfect.
For some reason I feel that Twingo reaching it maximum speed (at Le Mans) actually isn’t very safe (for the drivers).
We are racing Twingos and you want safety? Bubble wrap the interior
You get a seat in the GT3 only if you previously won in a Twingo spec race on the weekend prior.
My brother is involved with the wine industry in California and you can replace “racing” with “winery” and have the same issues. Winery owners are typically rich people who use them as a vanity project. Money does really ruin everything.
A winery sounds like a nice thing to lose money in if I were rich.
Want to make a small fortune in the wine industry? Start with a large one. (Says every winemaker you’ll ever talk to.) The positive thing with ultra rich winery owners is that they like to hire superstar winemakers who usually know what they’re doing. The downside is that they build tasting rooms of immense cost and magnificence and feel that their wine must be priced accordingly. So in the 80’s and early ’90’s. wine tasting in Napa meant free tasting and cabernets that ran from $15 to $50 or so. Now it’s common for tasting fees to run $50-75 (for 5 1-oz pours) and for the cheapest cabernet to go for $75 – 100. It’s become a rich guy wine Disneyland, and it’s really not worth going to anymore.
But it is still worth going to other wine areas in CA. There’s a lot more out there than Napa and Sonoma valleys. Santa Cruz in particular has many outstanding places to go taste, nearly all of them at sane pricing.
Absolutely! We live in Sacramento, so we spend a lot of time tasting in Amador and El Dorado counties. All of those places are more laid back and reasonable than Napa, and there’s plenty of good wine.
Ah, the you already know the goods. But yeah, I try and tell everyone (who might actually care…) the best zin is grown in Amador, not Sonoma. The best Rhône grapes come from east contra costa county, including the oldest Cinsault vines in the world. All of which can be had for around $25 a bottle typically.
Yeah, those old vineyards off of the bay make for really good wine. There’s a winery called Three that’s in the Sugar Mill, just south of Sac that specialized in those. A little pricier but very good.
I heard casinos were similar and you’d have to be an idiot to lose your shirt on, wait, this just in….
Did they lap the ‘ring with their hazards on?
The Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach used to have a Friday race of celebrities and a couple pros. Identical Toyota Celicas (then Scion tCs then the 86 at the end) with safety equipment, like 20 laps or so. Celebrities get a 30 second head start, then the pros catch them.
I have the #20 car from the 1990 race, driven by Dwight Yoakum. Still trying to get his autograph.
A Friday race of silly slower cars would be wonderful.
Saw several of those Pro-celeb races. They were a hoot! IIRC, Bruce Jenner was a pretty good driver.
Alfonso Ribeiro won like 4 of those races. I believe he got added as a pro because it at some point, I’d have to go back and look.
The headline is interesting in that you used “whom” but still dangled “at.” Would “at whom” have been too hoity and/or toity?
Matt, they’re LITERALLY powered by explosives. How much more heat do you need?
Specifically, a gas generator: Gas generator – Wikipedia
An explosive is defined as a substance that undergoes a rapid chemical reaction, resulting in the production of gasses and an increase in volume….
Just saying you’re both right.
I used to work for a company that specialized in gas generators (and even advised Takata against their infamous choice of propellant) so figured I’d share the science behind it if anyone was curious.
That must have so frustrating to have given good advice, have it ignored or overridden, and watched the company implode but not be able to enjoy it because they freaking killed people with their against advice stupidity. Heat, humidity and time growing crystals and reactions propagating quicker in crystals is basic enough that I (totally not in the industry, just paid attention in school) know about it.
I used to love racing in WRL but eventually the cars got too fast and the pay per seat drivers got too stupid and reckless (but definitely not wreck-less) and we decided to stop mainly for safety reasons. A decently prepped 90’s Civic or RX8 has no business being on the same track as proper 911 race cars and the occasional prototype. Shame too as those were really well run events where you were treated like adults and got some incredible track time at bucket-list tracks for a good price.
It is a bummer, and it’s happened so many times.
You should check out Lucky Dog Racing League endurance racing. I have only raced with them in California, but these days they have a whole series of races in the eastern US. LDRL is very serious about controlling speed creep: they set a minimum lap time for each race, and if you repeatedly drop below that lap time during the race your team is moved to “Super Dog” class where you are ineligible for overall or class winning perks. LDRL has consistently stated that they want their series to be welcoming to newcomers and therefore they will not allow the fast end of the field to become too fast.
Same thing happened to Chump Car. Us poors were already starting to get crowded out, but the decision to become a “serious” racing league (evidenced in part by abandoning the tongue-in-cheek, sarcasm-laden name for the very name it was meant to parody) sealed the deal.
I guess one race for sub-GT4s, and then the GT4 and over. But I’d have both N24 events a month or two apart so they can stand on their own. Maybe call the slower race the “marathon de la route” or whatever that race that tatra won was called.
Are we gonna get an article about the amendment to remove the mandatory remote kill switch in automobiles made after 2026 failing?
Seems relevant.
While I hate this, by the time I own anything made after 2026, whatever cellular connectivity the kill switch uses will be deprecated. If it’s not, the manufacturer will have long abandoned it and you won’t lose anything when you unplug the antenna.
It’s not a cellular connectivity thing. The car is suppose to be able to determine if you are driving unsafely, pull over to the side of the road, and shut itself off, all by itself.
It fails in the off position. Anything goes wrong and your car bricks itself.
The second generation of the Chevy Bolt had a short life too. After it was released early summer of 2021, it was recalled in August of the same year and a stop-sale in place right away. Not many 2022 models came out till the 2023 had the battery with no issues, then killed. Basically one year to get a Bolt with the tax credit, sales went crazy (I got one).
GM doing GM things.
I wouldn’t be surprised if new political environment cans the plans for the replacement, and GM does GM things again and does nothing.
Everyplace, everywhere, all at once. More Twingo is more Better.
I know for a fact they aren’t making the investment to bring back the Bolt, with its updates, in 1.5 years. Like Stellantis will never make the investment back from the Hornet, or the Charger Daytona R/T.
That isn’t very logical, at least to me (not like my opinion matters lmao).
For the racing question, I wouldn’t mind seeing Nürburgring offer a completely separate race for the slow cars. It would help solve the safety problem and it would get them on the track they’ve been preparing to race.
This is the answer
Why don’t they just do two 24 hour races: One for high speed, one for “normal” speed?
Base on qualifying – above X- minutes, normal group. Below X-minutes high speed. Hold on sequential weekends. Keep it inclusive but also safe.
Due to this statement, I’m obligated to share John Oliver’s three-part series on Air Bud. See part one below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hk011WMM7t0
Bringing a Twingo to a high end 24 hour endurance race is like landing a Cessna 152 it O’Hare – possible, sure, but for the safety of everybody, not a good idea.
Sounds more like Jackass: The Race than a serious racing effort. I’ve got no issue with somebody wanting to endurance race any vehicle of their choice, but for heaven’s sake, don’t put it on the same track with cars going two or three times faster. That’s just a recipe for someone to get killed, to say nothing of the very expensive vehicle carnage that’s likely to happen even if no one dies.
I had a teacher that was an amateur pilot and was flying a Cessna (a 172 I think) down by NYC. He was supposed to land at some small airport outside of the city but because of air traffic issues of some kind they had him land at LaGuardia. He said it was completely uneventful from his perspective – he landed, taxied over to the area with the private planes, gassed up and was good to go. But because of his speed and size, they couldn’t have any commercial jets anywhere near him when he was coming down, so they had to force a few big jets to circle around.
He brought this up in class and we started doing the math to figure out how many thousands of dollars in fuel were burned by airliners having to circle an extra 5 minutes to give him clearance to land.
In his case, he had ATC keeping the airspace clear for him. You don’t have that luxury coming to the end of Döttinger Höhe.
There’s actually YouTube video that came out a few years back, I think it was talked about at the old place, that documents someone landing a 172 at O’Hare. It seems only a little less nerve-wracking than trying to lap a Twingo when you know Max Verstappen is also on track with a GT3.
The Twingo should do a Cannonball Run
But West to East – Like the Tesla Model S just completed yesterday totally under FSD.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/a-tesla-actually-drove-itself-from-los-angeles-to-new-york-exclusive
Twingo should race in Greenland.
I’m just mad that you’re telling me how to feel.
Yeah – there’s enough hate in the world already.
Keep your powder dry for the really important stuff.
I will say, you certainly bucked the normal trend of following “now don’t get mad” with something that’s rage-inducing.
The racing thing made sense and didn’t make me angry at all; discontinuing the Bolt is puzzling, not upsetting; the Skoda news is good; and I can’t get mad at Kraftwerk.
They should send Skodas to the U.S. Hyundai/KVI would have some good competition.
Don’t be mad at us
Gold!
“You can’t just have your characters announce how they feel. That makes me feel angry!”