I have often thought about a class or event for vehicles that are standard OEM. By this the body shell remains OEM, engine chassis and body shell combinations remain unchanged from OEM.
Vehicles must have usual roll cage and recovery points as per current rules with standard interior panels in place excluding rear seat and bumpers.
Lockers allowed say rear only or front and rear if OEM specified a front locker as standard or electronic traction control as OME. It would be fun to campaign a vehicle that represents a factory standard vehicle and push it in a competition and see how long it takes to break! The manufacturers or retailers would be very protective of thier current late model vehicles being used for the purpose they were intended instead of towing bloody horse floats.
Winches should be all electric, off the shelf no mods twin batteries and plasma allowed.
Tyres kept at one brand ie less agressive than Simex to help identify a tyre that works well all round and more main stream. such as a narrow BFG or Khumo ??
Special stages are combination of gravel road and forest track, with a 31" tyre restriction tracks will be challenging to vehicle and teams without the extreme's having to be found.
When using OME equiptment, tyres and winches it should be easier to attract event sponsors.
I look back at Rallying in NZ, in the 80's and 90's classes allowed for very extreme Group A car, then organisers tried to calm things down and bring the sport back to OEM with Group N. Group N was rejected by most drivers at first until factory backed teams embraced it now look at that class, its the only class to compete in! Then there is Kiwi 2wd standard OME cars this is so easy to get into and very popular not mention cheaper than winch challenge!
This type of event should attract newer vehicles instead of old early 70's Range Rovers, oh I wonder if these would be competitive in this type of event 
??
I would like your thoughts on this cheers.....
[Modified by: Darryn Bell on 30 September 2007 21:25:10 ]