Eight of the best used cars under £2.5k to take racing

Best at: maximum attack

Just like the original Mini back in the Eighties and Nineties, there’s a shedload of modern Mini hatches around for very much not a shedload of money. And this opens up some excellent opportunities to test out that whole ‘go-kart handling’ claim that Mini has banged on about since the turn of the millennium.

If you’re looking for inspiration, dig up some old videos of the original Mini being flung around Crystal Palace or Bathurst. Or just check out Goodwood’s selection of truly fearless modern drivers sailing past people in period overalls at twice the speed of ‘cor, blimey’.

But that takes things we’re not working with in our scenario. Like the money to buy a classic Mini Cooper. The nous to get one to pump out 130bhp and weigh just 600kg. The ability to grow a moustache that looks period-correct.

What we do have, in this case, is 2,500 quid and the earnest desire to squander it in the best way possible. Well, at least the best that we can mention on a family website.

Best at: pretty much everything – gymkhana, autocross, circuit, hillclimb, drifting, rallying (if you’re brave), ice driving (if you’re of a fairly hardy disposition)

As any fan of recursive acronyms will tell you, Miata is always the answer. And, perhaps more than any other axiom in the car world, it’s the truest and most accurate.

Depending on your ambition, hardiness and sense of humour, an MX-5 can hold its own in roughly any discipline you care to mention. And more than a few than you don’t care to.

Now that the original is coming on as a bona fide classic car – only the proliferation of the things and their Greenland-shark-like longevity keep values down – the second- and third-gen MX-5s are the prime candidates for merciless lightweighting, race-prepping and track punishment. Questions like what sort of competition, what sort of track, or what surface said track is composed of are entirely up to you – because Miata is always the answer.

Best at: one-make racing

Laugh all you like; there’s already a CityCar Cup underway in Britain – open to Citroen C1s, Peugeot 107s and Toyota Aygos, i.e. a rose by any other name – with closer racing than most Formula 1 weekends. Its first year was 2020 – one hell of a year to debut a new race series – but even with some pretty severe limitations on... well, everything, it produced some pretty spectacular racing, considering how unspectacular the donor cars are.

Known nutters (and secret-up-until-now TG favs) Nik Blackhurst and Richard Brunning over at Bad Obsession Motorsports built a little C1 into a bona fide race car and detailed the entire process over on YouTube. If you like montages of welding peppered with the kind of wit that can only spring from a British mechanic’s mouth, we suggest checking it out.

Oh, and fellas? Put us down for a drive in Binky when he’s done.

Best at: circuit racing

If you consider that it has mid-engined balance, scant weight and rear-wheel-drive, is it any wonder that the MR-2 rivals even the MX-5 as the most circuit-ready cheap car going?

Of course, earlier MR-2s had some pretty vicious tendencies if subjected to hands of ham or egos of Kanye West, but later roadster versions solved that problem pretty neatly. As did not driving like a berk.

And you can choose between the coupe’s ‘watch it, sunshine’ handling, or the later roadster’s actual sunshine, both within our meagre budget. And if you do end up spinning on track, the badge on the back helpfully sounds out how to swear in French. It really is the gift that keeps on giving.

Best at: erm, isn’t it obvious? Off-road racing, champ

Sure, there’s nothing more expensive than a cheap Range Rover, but what about a dirt-cheap Range Rover? It’s possible to buy an old P38 in working condition for less than £2,500, which means that you’re spending about one pound for every five the previous owner had to spend to get the damn thing in a vaguely saleable condition.

Given the... uh, intermittent reliability of your average P38 Range Rover, and the fact that, in this scenario, you bought an entire Range Rover and still managed to get change from £3,000, we would probably advise against rally raids through the deserts of northern Africa. Call us overly cautious.

Best at: toppling Sabine’s Nordschleife van record... if you’re absolutely barking mad

Regardless of how you measure time – water passing beneath bridges, bridges falling into the water, how many times Phoebe Waller-Bridge asks for a glass of water – it’s fair to say that it’s been a while since dear Sabine’s legendary assault on the Green Hell in a diesel Transit van.

In fact, it was more than a decade ago that Sabine took leave of whichever senses had held her back until that point and managed to lap one of the toughest, most demanding and longest racetracks in a hair over 10 minutes. Again, in a diesel Transit.

Since then, we’ve seen everything from splitties to actual DHL vans tempt fate and physics around the Nordschleife – and yes, more Transits than we can poke an overnight-delivered stick at – but never anything from the master of slab-sided multi-person-mobility that is the Nissan Elgrand. Is it the perfect thing for a few Touristenfahrten? Absolutely not. Is it just hilarious enough to attempt a rerun of that awe-inspiring run from many Bridgewaters ago? You tell us.

Best at: grown-up dodgems

Not everyone’s super into this whole ‘racing’ thing. Some find the stress of competition upsetting and the constant g-forces... erm, upchucking. Some may yearn for a simpler time, when there were no winners and losers, just lots and lots of giggles. And possibly whiplash.

So why not relive the glory days of gleefully ambushing your siblings under the almost-watchful eye of carnies? You and your friends nab a cheap Toyota iQ each, disconnect the airbags, staple some old tyres to the bumpers and smack into each other until your mum tells you it’s time to go home. Sound great to anyone else?

Best at: banger racing

Generally, you can’t get a whole lot of Golf GTI for less than £2,500. But that’s OK, because the MkIV wasn’t a whole lot of Golf GTI to begin with.

The good news for the impecunious motorsports fan is that you can pick one of the quickest of an admittedly slow bunch, strip out what passed for luxury two decades ago and start pounding around the nearest track, trading paint, plastic and varyingly vital pieces of machinery with other bangers as you indulge in the most accessible (and possibly best) kind of racing.

Parts abound for MkIV Golf GTIs, partly because they sold well at the time and mostly because no one who’s done a modicum of research into them wants a Golf GTI that struggles to out-accelerate a Corolla from the same time period. Luckily, the GTI Turbo neatly sidesteps this little conundrum by having 175bhp out of the factory.

After you’ve put your car (and possibly yourself, after being shut in for a year straight) on a comprehensive motorsport diet, you’re actually looking at a pretty healthy power-to-weight ratio for something that cost you all of two grand. Now get out there and raise some hell!