Thanks for all of the great feedback. I think we have a clear(er) pathway moving forward.. In the original post, I left out one piece of information, we also have a '99 Boxster. I didn't mention it because we were supposed to sell it. But after seeing the responses on here and rennlist, we are going to keep the Boxster and spend some money to get it mechanically sound. We took it out and she actually finds it easier to drive than the GTI, less rev hang so easier to time the the clutch. We were able to get the Boxster for under $5k and it will cost another $4k to get all of the known failure points in the engine addressed. This works out great because I didn't want to sell it in the first place. The only problem now is that BMW CCA won't allow convertibles without a full roll cage. Is this true on A/X or is it only for HPDEs? We are going to use the X3 for the first few events so she can get more comfortable with the manual.
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Originally Posted by cxp213
I know you already said you tried teaching her but maybe get someone else to teach her and take out the GTI, which would end up being most cost effective, I'd imagine. AX won't harm your car either, other than maybe a few cone scuffs (which comes off for the most part).
Miatas are good cars if you plan on only doing autocross. Even if you only plan on ax, there are plenty of time trials, club trials, hpde, and open track days that will eventually tempt you. When that happens, Miatas won't be as fun as some other cars (at least, I wouldn't think so) since they're so slow outside of ax without heavy modification.
FRS/BRZs are like slow S2000s, lol. They're great at handling but aren't that fast straight line. Similar to Miatas, they're much more suited to ax, but less so for bigger tracks.
edit - Just noticed you're in E TX. Where are you located? I'm in Dallas. We have weekly events (ax, time trials, club trials, hpde, open track days, drifting, etc), just FYI. I've been doing this for quite a while and sometimes instruct at these events, so let me know if you ever feel like venturing out this way!
OP, I'd say keep it stock in the beginning but since your concern is roll-over, there are some simple things you can do to reduce this risk:
-lowering springs to lower center of gravity
-wider track with more aggressive wheel offset
-minimizing body roll with sway bars
-alignment with bit more negative camber
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Since she has wider after market tires, should we swap them out for the OE tires so that there is less grip (slide before flip)? We are planning to use the Boxster in the future so I don't want to spend too much on the X3.
We are just west of Longview and actually go to Dallas frequently. THe plan is actually to be there tomorrow to drop off the Boxster at RAC performance. Please shoot me a PM, I would love to learn more about the weekly events! Since our schedules are all over the place, it is a bit difficult to find events that fit in so if you have weekly events, we would love to learn more.