[SSLance]

Oh man... I have fought this same fight over and over and over again with my car. Not quite at your level Craig but still the same fight.

Thankfully, I have never repainted my car...so it already has it's share of exterior bumps and bruises. This takes me out of the "don't let it out of my site" camp. I still worry about theft though, so I'm careful where and for how long I leave it sit unattended.

That said, I've put over 2,000 miles on mine already this year. Most of it spent running errands, chauffeuring the wife around on weekends, trips to the Post Office, grocery store etc and some just flat out joy riding and testing runs. I like driving this car, I've tried hard to keep it very street friendly so far.

The forward cage bars and containment seat is the line I believe. At this point, one needs to be wearing a helmet in the driver seat which won't happen on street duty. I think you can still qualify for everything up to wheel to wheel racing without the forward upper cage bars and I believe Ron has a nice containment seat that the upper head supports remove to make it more street friendly. If you want to drive your car on the street, I'd look at those two options. Not being able to see around a full containment seat on the street would be a deal killer for me.

My Recaros are pretty comfy once in them but climbing back out of them is a bit of a pain. They are about as "race seat" as I'd go in a street car. Racetech has some nice very similar seats that I looked hard and long at. As long as your door bars aren't higher than the sides of your race seat, they shouldn't be an issue either.

I'll just add one more thing... I've thought about adding both safety and track performance options that I could also unbolt for street driving, but in reality...you won't take the time to install and then uninstall them for each track event. You'll most likely just put them in and leave them in so consider that. The extreme that I go is I'll stow my 5 point harnesses away when on street and use my factory 3 point belts for restraints. That and some shock adjustments are all I make when switching to race mode.

Hope that helps...