The Car I Probably Shouldn’t Have Bought
An Old Formula Car, and the Long Way Back to the Track
There’s a certain kind of decision that doesn’t make sense on paper.
It doesn’t align with your schedule, doesn’t fit neatly into your budget,
And it definitely doesn’t come with any guarantee of success.
This was one of those decisions.
A few days ago, I bought a race car.
Not a new one. Not a turnkey one. Not even a particularly good one—at least not right now. It’s a 1990 open-wheel car —An Elden FF2000/FC.
A chassis that, at some point in its life, ran hard, ran well… and then slowly slipped into the quiet limbo that so many old race cars do.
It’s complete. Mostly.
It’s intact. More or less.
And it’s very far from ready.
Which, of course, is exactly why I bought it. Because this isn’t about acquiring something finished, it’s about understanding it. How it was built; why it was built that way; what it takes to bring it back—not just cosmetically, but mechanically, structurally… honestly.
I’ve spent a career around developing and operationalizing systems. I understand process. But this is different.
This is learning—again. From the ground up.
How to inspect a suspension not on a spreadsheet, but on a concrete floor.
How to source parts for a nearly one-off chassis that most people have never heard of.
How to make decisions between “correct,” “safe,” and “what’s actually possible.”
And eventually—get it back on the track. Not as a concept or nostalgia, but as a machine that deserves to be used the way it was intended.
This will not be a quick project.
There will be wrong turns.
There will be parts that don’t fit (likely a few busted knuckles) and solutions that don’t work the first time.
There will be moments where it would have been far easier to walk away.
But that’s not really the point, is it?
Over the coming weeks and months, I’m going to document the entire process here in The Grand Touring Journal—and in video.
The teardown.
The decisions.
The setbacks.
The small wins that matter more than they should.
And, if everything goes to plan… the first time it turns a wheel in anger again.
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Next: Where to even begin with a 30-year-old race car.
I love this. We can’t age backwards. A car can. Our glory days are in the past. A car’s doesn’t have to be. There is something so beautifully pure about restoring a machine in order to recapture its reason for being…it’s part of the romanticism of racing. Can’t wait to see how this turns out.