10 Cars To Turn Into Track Day Weapons For Under £10,000

As nice as it’d be to go out and buy a new Porsche 911 GT3 RS, Ariel Atom 4R or Caterham 620 as a track day toy, we’re not all financially blessed enough for such things. Yet, that doesn’t stop us from being able to build a track day monster of our own on a relative budget.

Looking for a (reasonably) cheap car that, with a few mods, can be a seriously capable weapon on a circuit? We’ve picked out a few options.

ZC31S Suzuki Swift Sport

The first-gen Suzuki Swift Sport neatly ticks the boxes we’re looking for here.

Cheap? You can pick one up for as little as £1000 with the very best topping around close to £4000. Light? Pretty, weighing a little under 1.1 tonnes. Powerful? Errr, not really at only 123bhp, but thanks to a short-ratio five-speed manual gearbox, thrashing it to its 7k redline makes it feel quick.

There’s now even a dedicated race series in the form of the Swift Sport Challenge, so you could even enter it in some competitive motorsport without spending a huge deal more. The package to get all the bits required to homologate the car costs just £5000.

NC Mazda MX-5

A Mazda MX-5 had to feature on this list, didn’t it? A few years ago, an NA or NB would be a slam dunk, but prices for good ones are only increasing.

Meanwhile, the NC seems to be pretty stable. You can pick up an early 2.0-litre car pretty easily with half of our full £10,000 budget, and the aftermarket support is vast, so you could make easy use of the rest of it to prep it as a track day monster.

We’d probably look at coilovers first and foremost to remove some of its inherent softness, before heading towards BBR GTi for some power upgrades.

E46 BMW 330ci

We suspect it won’t be much longer until any desirable form of the E46 BMW 3 Series will exceed £10,000, so get one while you can. The 330ci’s M54 engine is one of the sweetest six-cylinders you can grab at our price point, and its 230ish horsepower (depending on how well looked after it’s been) is ample enough.

We’d be looking towards suspension, tyres and maybe even a limited-slip differential to keep the rear in check as upgrades.

W30 Toyota MR2

Mid-engined cars are the ideal layout for the track, thanks to an inherent balance. Unfortunately, £10,000 isn’t going to cover most options out there – but our first pick with its engine in the correct place is the last-generation Toyota MR2.

Prices have started to shoot up in recent years. There was a time £1k would easily get you a W30, though now you’ll be looking around four times that for ones worth considering. Still a relative bargain for what is a sensational-handling car, too, and still plenty left in the bank to take advantage of deep aftermarket support.

Mk6 Ford Fiesta ST

In a similar vein to the Swift Sport, but with more of everything, is the Mk6 Ford Fiesta ST. Its 2.0-litre Duratec offers up close to 150bhp, in a car only just over 1100kg.

Nice examples are getting hard to find as more rust away or end up in ditches, but they’re still out there.

Mod support is pretty strong too. Ford specialists Mountune offer tonnes of desirable upgrades for the Mk6, so we’d take our business its way to turn the Fiesta into a proper short track demon.

L880 Daihatsu Copen

“A rogue shout, but I like it”, said our Mike Bartholomew when I asked him for his opinions on this list. He’s not wrong.

The Daihatsu Copen was never designed as a full-blown sports car, but rather a cutesy little Kei convertible. Yet as a product of its mid-engined layout and thanks to shedloads of aftermarket support, it’s very possible to turn one into a proper little circuit rascal.

Although it was designed for Japan, the first-gen Copen did find its way to the UK and in good numbers. It’s easy to pick up a decent one for as little as £1500.

986 Porsche Boxster

Ah, a cheap Porsche Boxster as a track car. What a bold shout, Car Throttle!

We know, but it’s obvious for good reason. The 986 Boxster can still be had for relative pennies (excusing the potential IMS repair bill for a moment…) and is pretty much good to go on track out of the box.

For a full track car, though, we’d be going for a proper roll cage as well as upgrading the suspension. Can’t go wrong with a set of BBS LMs, either.

Any Westfield

If you don’t want to build something for the track from a road car, you could always go straight for the factory track weapon. You can’t afford a Caterham, but you can afford a Westfield.

It’s a similar concept to what Caterham has been doing for so long – a recreation of the original Lotus 7, just with modern(ish) internals. Engine choices range quite dramatically depending on what the original shed-builder decided to drop in, but we did find a V8 in budget…

XP10 Toyota Yaris T-Sport

Sure, the Toyota GR Yaris is the ultimate form of the nameplate, but there’ll never be a day when they come close to £10,000. For a fraction of the price, you could get the first performance-focused Yaris – the T-Sport.

Coming from a time when Toyota was entering a bit of an enthusiast malaise, it wasn’t a dramatic reinvention of the hatchback but did have a useful 105bhp from a 1.5-litre four-cylinder engine, complete with variable valve timing. That paired up with a sweet five-speed manual makes for a fun recipe.

They’re bulletproof too, and pretty cheap to replace oily bits on the rare occasion they do go wrong.

K11 Nissan Micra

Yes, your nan’s old Nissan Micra can be turned into a mega little track weapon. Out of the factory, the K11 Micra weighed just a little over 820kg, and you could probably get it much closer to 700kg without too much stripping. Hilarious on its own.

You will want to make mods, but delightfully, the aftermarket for the K11 has boomed in recent years. Coilovers, tiny track tyres, uprated brakes and a fat exhaust would be on our list. If you’re feeling really brave, it’s been known to handle SR20 or K20 swaps.