Thanks, Garen! Yes, I am interested in one, but I'm not sure how much I'd get to use it, other than to write about it. The racing around Miami is pretty much dead, and if I got really serious about it, I'd probably need to move back to Michigan. Lon gave me a pretty good explanation of how they work (we were going to do a video, but didn't get to it), and I got a real good look at Noah's car.
Some of the fast guys tell me that after 1/8 4WD the pan car is too tame, but I see that as an advantage - I had been thinking about a GT car, but the pan car seems like a much better idea.
Setup seems like it should be very simple - there aren't that many things to set up. Getting all the parts nice and free is something you do for any car, so nothing special there. I got to watch Noah's car quite a bit through my viewfinder, and when he did things right, so did the car. It never looked like he was fighting the car. Other people drove "harder", but he drove more like the way I try to, taking it somewhat easy, and not pushing the car. My advice to him was to simply stay out of trouble, and he'd be getting a trophy - and he did! As Art Carbonell says, pick a pace you want to run at for the full duration of the race, and stick to it, even if other cars are passing you. It's usually "the fast guys" who run into problems, and drop back.
Anyway, bottom line, if I were still living in Ann Arbor, I'd probably already have one of them. As it is, I'd like one, but I'm not sure when/how I'd ever get to use it...... although it's the ONLY car that I've actually thought about bringing to the GLC again. Even that idea has problems though, as I might not be able to do the same race coverage if I was working on and worried about my own car........
Last thought - the ancient pan cars (now museum relics) worked well enough on the rough asphalt tracks that were all people had way back when. Your new pan car is better, the tracks are better, the tires are better, and the electronics are better - I see a real win/win situation with getting one of these pan cars - should be a ton of fun!