This is an Aston Martin GT1 car. It's built by Aston Martin. It first came off an Aston Martin production line. Aston Martin then transformed it into a GT racing car. And that's the way it should be. (Photo: Marshall Pruett) » More Photos

Like Sam mentioned, most Rolex GT cars today are similar to an old TransAm car or NASCAR than they are related to anything sold on the street. Granted, there are some production based cars in the Rolex GT series—Porsche in particular, but I understand production-based cars are being phased out in the near future in GT. At that point, the cars seen on the track will have little to do the DNA of what's driven on the street, and to me, that’s what distinguishes a GT car from other forms of racing. You can also count on Porsche bailing out of Rolex GT once that happens—they won’t dress a Riley GT chassis with 911 bodywork.

With a proper GT car you have manufacturers competing against one another with the cars they produce on the assembly line as the core of what is used for competition. Reduce that to dropping engines from different manufacturers into cookie cutter chassis, and we’re headed back down a path that again calls into question how a GT car is defined.

Take the popular Riley Rolex GT chassis—it’s used by Mazda for their RX8 and by a team that’s running a BMW M5 just in the same way NASCAR teams use the Car of Tomorrow chassis beneath the skin of cars we’re led to believe represent Ford, Chevy, Dodge, and Toyota. At least engineers from those NASCAR manufacturers are heavily involved in their creation and actually touch the cars that carry their names. that's not to say Mazda isn't heavily involved in their GT cars, but those RX-*'s aren't shipped over from Japan; they come from Riley's shop in North Carolina. Before I piss too many other people off, it's worth noting Riley Technologies isn't at fault here--they build cars to suit the rule books in the series their customers compete in.

With that said, in Rolex GT, you could buy a chassis, an engine--let's say a BMW, a BMW body, and all the other parts to assemble the car yourself. You'd put it all together, paint it, and apply BMW stickers as a finishing touch. But if no one from BMW has ever seen or touched the car, and it rolled out from your garage instead of BMW's factory, is it really a BMW? Is it what the racing world has considered to be a GT car for as long as anyone can remember? The answer is no.

It's no more a real BMW GT car than Kyle Busch's NASCAR Toyota Camry shares s single not or bolt with a real Camry.

So what is this thing called a 'GT' car, then? We know it's a racecar, but not a GT racecar, no matter what title it has been given by the Rolex series. (If we're allowed to start falsely naming things, I have an '89 Aston Martin Fiesta for sale. $150K. No trades.)

Just as NASCAR teams have universally hated the Car of Tomorrow (CoT), saying that it shares nothing with the evolution of the traditional Stock Cars of the past, and seeing how NASCAR owns and runs the Rolex GT series, maybe we call these things "GT CoT's"? I'm not sure on what 'tomorrow' they're every going to be considered a real GT cars, but as long as we understand they have nothing in common with proper GT cars, there's nothing wrong with them holding organized races and competing amongst themselves. Seeing them race against ALMS GT1-spec cars is something I wouldn't want to see, though. GT1 cars are on a different planet--a wickedly fast planet. The gap in lap times and overall speed would be embarrassing.

I like to see the best engineering minds from Mazda, Porsche, GM, Ferrari, BMW, Ford, Aston Martin, etc, wage war with their production cars built to the extremes of GT racing. Add in the competition between nations--Germany, Japan, Italy, England, France, America...and you have the core of what's fueled GT competition from when the first cars were raced.

If GrandAm ever moves in the direction of real GT cars, I'd be the first to call for an all-star race between ALMS and Rolex teams. Unlike Indycar's unification, I'm not sure I'll live to see that happen.