The point still remains, the more time and effort these cars take to maintain, the more cars we'll continue to lose and perhaps not have new teams start and race.

There are two factors in racing.. Time and Money..

You can't change the amount of time people have, but you can certainly change the amount of money they are forced to spend......

Wait a minute.....
Just because there "could be" rule in place for alternative bodies doesn't mean that anyone will be FORCED into the cost for that body.
As someone had said earlier, the fibreglass body weighs 130 pounds. I would almost bet that the stripped down tin body weighs close to the same. So if and it's only IF the alternative bodies could be run and there is a 50 pound weight penalty for it then there will NO performance advantage. So what would the big deal be?
There are cars at Barrie in the thunder car division that don't meet the rules as they are today and they are running. Jim's car is probably the closest to the rules as far as the body goes.
When they allowed standard transmissions in Thunder cars how many were FORCED to change? From what I know there is only one car at Barrie to do it. I'm sure there was an increased cost to make that happen. But not everyone did it.

For me it is far easier and way less time consuming to use a NEW aftermarket body. Yes it costs money. But so does the 50 hours I will spend looking for what I want, picking it up and prepping for installation.

I hope that this makes my point a little more clear.
This wasn't intended to get everyone rattled on spending money or being forced into something. It would be one more thing that also get a few guys to step up to LM, because Barrie needs a ton of help there too!!!!

I get your point totally.
I was involved with the new gen cars when they were thinking about what to do. The idea was to use the metric chassis and use newer bodies because clean parts were getting hard to find. But they had to look like what they were intended to be. If it was a 94 Grand Prix then that's what it was from nose to tail.

The problem now is the RULES haven't been followed or enforced. The most likely reason is because of the low car counts.
One guy shows up the LM nose or plastic fenders or whatever and they don't stop it then the next guy does it, that is the speedways fault. But they let it slide because they NEED cars.

If I show up with a 2011 Mustang and has to be a steel body then it will be. It will the correct body from nose to tail. It won't have some parts from different models or years or a combo of LM parts.
It would just be nice to do it in an alternative body material.

See you all in the spring with whatever they say I can do.