OK - so you found a suitable car to start with. It's time to roll up your sleeves and dig in. But first, you have a major philosophical decision to make. Just how far do you want to go? Are you going to construct a gilded marvel of racecar engineering or take the "Sanford & Son" approach? Either way can be equally successful on the track - it's just a matter of how obsessive you decide to be. It really comes down to how much you want to spend. Obviously, if you're aiming for the bottom of the cost range and just want to get out there on the track, there are a lot of cosmetic-oriented steps you can leave out to save both time and money. On the other end of the spectrum, you could pretty much spend as much as you want making every detail perfect. This was a topic for some soul-searching for me, as I've restored a bunch of classic cars in the past and am used to striving for show-winning perfection. If you're like this, get over it! Everyone I've talked to tells me that this is a sure way to drive myself mad. Club racing is a rough-and-tumble business, and cars quickly accumulate "battle damage" - especially if this is your first racecar. You can fill every door ding, get a $2000 paint job, and be able to eat off your undercarriage, but after your first few races you'll have beaten the thing around enough that you'll erase all that hard work and more. I throttled back my anal-retentiveness as much as I could, and tried to build a clean, presentable, solidly built car without going overboard. It still turned out really nice though. The reality is that there are a number of things you can do that don't cost you much in terms of time or money that have a big effect on the appearance and reliability of the car. Appearance and reliability are much more closely related than you may think. If you've put something together in a smart, robust way, it'll look good automatically. I'll go more into this later.