12 affordable used circuit heroes to embrace trackday season

Summer has firmly established itself this year, our evenings consistently long and sunny. But forget burning a few sausages in the back garden as you sip a tepid lager – the best way to embrace our sprawling hours of daylight is on circuit. Dozens of Great British venues offer trackdays and evenings; all you need is a game little car to take there. And you can secure one of those for little over a grand.

A fab place to start is this Toyota MR2. It’s a mk3 car, making it the most appealing of the lot from a handling perspective, even if it’s still trailed by a minor ‘widow maker’ reputation. With its engine in the middle it’s far more exotic than the beginner’s track car du jour – the Mazda MX-5 – and with its roof neatly folded you’ll have a blast on the way to and from your track session, too. Yours for just £2,995.

Don’t fancy launching your track career backwards into a tyre wall? This front-wheel-drive mk2 Suzuki Swift Sport is arguably the peak example of ‘My First Track Car’. The first-gen car was a riot, but it grew up usefully in its second iteration, gaining a sixth gear ratio, the option of back doors, and a mite more refinement inside. More of an everyday proposition.

Power from its keenly revving 1.6-litre nat-asp engine is still at the gentler end of the spectrum (at 134bhp) but with precious little weight to carry (just 1,045kg) you won’t mind a jot. And who wouldn’t prefer a car you can keep pinned for much of your track session, rather than one whose throttle you trepidatiously feather in order to get home in one piece?

A firm TopGear.com favourite here, and perhaps the greatest everyday hot hatchback of all time. The third-gen Clio reached its peak with the 2009 introduction of the 200 Cup, a tautly sprung but utterly thrilling interpretation of the traditional front-driven hatch recipe, yet a car still able to amble around with decent decorum and fuel efficiency when you weren’t kissing its 7,500 redline.

Shop wisely – they have a few known issues – and you can end up with an all-time great track car that can still carry your shopping home without drama. This low mileage, lightly fettled Gordini special edition even has standard-fit racing stripes. Those are surely worth an extra few horsepower alone…

Think ‘track car’ and there’s a thoroughly good chance it’s a Caterham Seven that pops into your head. Choosing which one is tricky, and the temptation to go for a banzai R500 or 620R will naturally prove strong. But those are both a) a bit pricey and b) rather scary for a novice. You can learn just as much (if not more) about the finer details of car control in this modest, £16k Supersport. And crucially it doesn’t look a whole lot different.

A classic 1.6-litre K Series engine offers around 120bhp – ample with half a tonne to haul – and should provide just enough muscle to get those rear tyres dictating your cornering angle on a compassionately marshalled track evening. Bliss.

Trade a little of the Caterham’s rawness and you can gain a heap more civility. The Lotus Elise is the next natural step on from a Seven, though we’re prioritising affordability here – and the Mk2 Elise’s curious, Griffin-badged spin-off remains something of a second-hand bargain. The VX220 was no less fun to drive and brought a surprisingly different look to their shared, extruded aluminium chassis beneath.

Indeed the pair shared only 10 per cent of their components, right down to Vauxhall offering an entirely different engine, its 2.2-litres contributing the numerical end of the VX220 name. Its 144bhp and 149lb ft peaks proved enough to hustle its sub-tonne kerbweight to 135mph via a 5.6sec 0-60mph time. Its mid-engined, rear-driven layout won’t be the simplest to master for a trackday beginner, but the non-assisted steering provides a supremely direct stream of communication about the intentions of the car beneath you. Cool things – and the TopGear.com buying guide is here…

The biggest bargain on this list? Hot Cooper S versions of the modern Mini are awash in the classifieds for not much over two grand (and often under). Plenty will have been driven hard or not wholly cherished; arguably all the better for buying a cheap tool to attack your first track evenings with. They can be reasonably tail happy with a bit of provocation, too.

And the less you spend on the car, the more you can pour into a decent set of tyres or a good brake upgrade. This 2011 Cooper S looks especially appealing in classic white ‘n’ black colours and with a thoroughly healthy 181bhp and 192lb ft from its 1.6-litre turbo engine.

Okay, we’ve briefly turned a blind eye to affordability. Finding a decent looking R35 Nissan GT-R for under forty grand isn’t the work of a moment and even if you uncover one, its fuel and tyre bills will still prove ruinous even in everyday mooching. But what incredible devices these remain nearly two whole decades after launch.

Straight out of the box, a GT-R will monster most other cars on a typical UK trackday. Anyone who’s attended a British circuit since its 2007 launch will know that very few operate ‘out of the box’, though; tuning these into four-figure outputs is the work of a moment on the aftermarket. Not that we’d recommend that right away, of course. Buying a standard GT-R can be the Manga-chiselled start of a long, rewarding trackday habit. Of gradually honing and improving your car to complement your own soaring confidence.

The same approach applies here. The BMW M135i hatch and M235i coupe (and cabrio) can be bought with relative ease and then modified with very little effort. A big, six-cylinder turbo engine in a compact, Focus-sized car will always entertain, and while these were a little soft edged in their stock form, reputed British tuners are queuing round the block to sharpen up their each and every facet.

Should you wish to avoid the somewhat boisterous image the M135i (and its M140i successor) have attracted, then a smidge over £9,000 can slot you into this nicely mature little M235i coupe. Keep the exterior standard and you have the makings of an epic, under-the-radar track special.

Or you can pursue the hot hatchback which (kinda) followed the M135i into production. BMW M boss Albert Biermann was snapped up by Hyundai to transform its image and develop a blockbuster launch product for its gnarly N Division. He and his merry crew of engineers did precisely that with the i30N, a traditional front driven, four-cylinder powered five-door hatch with a truly mischievous attitude. It launched against the superlative Honda Civic Type R with a rawer, rougher-edged character and a healthy dose of old-school charm.

Small wonder it’s lost little of its value since; £15k appears to be your entry point for a car with a solid history. Its tenacious front end but (on demand) mobile rear make for an ideal track toy, and the 276bhp of this i30N Performance should monster most UK circuit straights without frustrating the cars behind. Just keep a keen eye on its equally mobile fuel gauge needle…

Or perhaps you crave purity. The Subaru BRZ launched alongside its non-identical Toyota GT86 twin way back in 2012; it did so with deliberately modest power and torque and a powertrain and chassis pairing that was unapologetically spoddy in an increasingly posh and power-focused performance car market. Here was a car you needed an intrinsic knowledge of Gran Turismo career mode to grasp. And spectacular patience to extract the best from.

If you’re looking to leap from the seat of your sim and onto a real, physical race circuit, though, it’s a pretty cool place to start, even if its 197bhp and 151lb ft peaks feel meek even with just 1,230 kilos to hustle along. Much like the rest of this list, the tuning fraternity sit willing and able to boost your BRZ into the stratosphere should you so wish. A £9,130 price tag for a trademark blue example is sorely tempting.

Much less purity, significantly more practicality. It’s all very well recommending you a bunch of track toys, but the hypothetical two- or three-car garage is often, in modern Britain and its paucity of parking, precisely that. Hypothetical. So here’s a do-it-all car that can whisk your family around in bougie luxury on the weekends, be packed to the gunwales with camping gear in the school holidays, then shed all of its sagacity and cut properly loose on track when the moment presents itself.

A 1.8-tonne, 4WD estate car won’t be as potent on circuit as a Porsche, but the 4.2-litre nat-asp V8 of this ‘B8’ gen RS4 is a superstar all of its own, and its rapid-fire seven-speed DSG ‘box and friendly Quattro setup should make it an amiable – and thoroughly enjoyable – thing to guide around Oulton or Cadwell as the sun turns orange amidst a summer track evening. Before hustling you home in a bath of B&O sound and pano roof ambience. All for £18,000.

Those taking their trackdays seriously, though, should look no further than an Ariel Atom. The Somerset sports car has now been with us a whole quarter of a century and a device that appeared space age in 2001 still looks unequivocally mad now. Ariel has marked the 25th anniversary with a barely hinged 525bhp special. Fabulous though it is, it’s no place for a circuit beginner to chase their first apexes in.

So instead take a peek at this 2007 Ariel Atom 3 for little over a tenth of the price. It’s packing half the power, its Honda Civic-sourced 2.0-litre engine churning out 245bhp at a sky-high 8,200rpm redline, yet is still capable of whisking you from 0-62mph in a brutal three-second blitz. But it’s the gorgeous steering and poised, balanced handling that’ll really etch a smile on your face on track. Production cars get no rawer than this.