Yes, You Can Make a Race Car Street Legal in the USA. Here's How

Any of us who are into speed has probably wondered about having a street-legal race car at one time or another. No, I am not talking about a muscle car with stickers, but a real-life, tube-frame, sheet-metal shell stock car, or an IndyCar, if that is your thing. But, of course, most speedfreaks eventually settle for a muscle car or some other tuner. But what if you could legally tag and register a real-life race car? Well, you actually can, and we can help! Just like a kit car, a replica car, or a homebuilt hot rod, nothing prevents retired race cars from becoming street-legal machines if you have the right help.

It’s true that you can hit the open road in a race car with just a little elbow grease, and as luck would have it, some race cars have been street legal the whole time. In fact, street legality has been an essential part of many of our favorite forms of car racing since day one.

The History of Speed in America

America has a long-standing obsession with cars - high-speed cars. Of course, going fast is not a distinctly American obsession; anyone who has traveled through Germany can attest to this fact. Nevertheless, we might be considered benign by comparison. The early days of racing were, in fact, racing rivalries with European foes. 

This would be the mainstay of racing well into the 1930s, and in fact, the races were free to watch by anyone who wanted to; the drivers usually paid for their own cars and mechanical support. 

Different Types of Racing

Racing was originally on the track or the road, and the cars in the early eras were not all that fast. But the sport of racing was born, and it was always about what it is still about: going faster than the person next to you. Some of that involved tuning options and a lot of it was just in driving skills. This is particularly true in recent generations of racing, where there is no separation in technology. 

Drag Racing

The quarter-mile drags are an old form of American racing, dating back to the post-World War II era when teenagers would routinely soup up their cars and run them in the straightaways on rural roads. The premise of the drags has not changed: two cars side-by-side for a standing start going to a predetermined point down the road. But, of course, this did pose some real danger to the drivers and potential spectators because they were running on open roads with no shoulders.

During this time, drag strips popped up all over the states because entrepreneurs could lay half a mile of asphalt down in two lanes, throw up a time-keeping device and a light tree, add some bleachers, and voila, a drag race strip was born. The local authorities are happy because they keep dangerous races off public roads. Drivers are happy because it is fair; there is no arguing that someone got the jump or crossed the line first. The winner was the winner, the times were accurate, and the cars were still street legal - if only enough to drive home at the end of the night.

Incidentally, the quarter-mile distance appears to be mostly arbitrary. It was the product of finding a distance that was easy to measure on an open road and keeping the distance short since longer distances would increase the risk. It is much easier to see a quarter of a mile down a road than half a mile. 

The drags are a lot different than road racing. They are a form of racing still accessible to the common man; drag strips are plentiful across the nation, and amateur drivers can bring their cars to the strip and test their mettle and machine. It is still the embodiment of the old day of hot-rodding the car you own, as so many cars racing are street-legal machines.

Traditionally, there were few restrictions on what modifications were acceptable. Classes of vehicles were grouped into cars with approximately the same body style and size, i.e., Chargers versus Camaros, etc. Since then, it has evolved a lot, with funny cars and top-fuel dragsters pushing the envelope above 300 miles per hour, but drag racing remains a pure form of racing where you can run a street-legal car on the track with no sponsors just for fun and bragging rights. 

Open Wheel Racing

Open-wheel racing gets its name from the open wheels, i.e., no fenders, no skirts, no wheel wells. These cars are the single-seat missiles that we see in places like Formula 1. Since they are distinctly single-seated, they are incredibly light, with race day examples weighing 1,650 pounds. 

This form of racing is dangerous. The driver’s head is completely exposed, so in the instance of a wreck, parts and road debris can hit them in the helmet, and the extreme horsepower married to the cars' lack of weight makes them difficult to learn and control. 

Open-wheel racing is popular globally and has a following in the U.S., but it is nowhere near the popularity of the reigning champ, NASCAR. 

Closed Car Racing

If open-wheel racing is a car with open wheels, it stands to reason that closed-car racing has…enclosed cars. 

The origins of closed car racing in the U.S. date back to the infamous races on Daytona Beach, Florida, back in the 1940s. The name ‘stock car’ comes from the requirement that the car’s body remain stock; all acceptable modifications would be in the suspension (such as stiffer springs) and the drivetrain. The idea was to keep costs down by using a primarily stock car, hence the name. Of course, the modern NASCAR, or the other stock car series below the NASCAR level, is far from stock, but the appeal is still there. 

As the NASCAR circuit gained popularity, the Big Three in Detroit saw many dollar signs and soon became heavily involved. The stock cars began looking precisely like their production cars, and the races moved away from small tracks, or notably, the literal beach, onto large, fast asphalt tracks (Daytona Speedway; Talladega, Alabama). The tracks handled many more cars, were far faster, and, most importantly, could seat many more fans. 

As the sport grew, so did the rulebook. The cars must be very close in size and performance, and it is by design: close races sell! Nobody wants to watch the leader walk away from the crowd. They want to see the races bunched up and tight. Again, NASCAR is far and away the most popular form of organized racing, bringing in enormous sums of money. In addition, it has a religious following, which is why there is a lot of interest in street-legal NASCARs and NASCAR cars for sale. 

Sport-Car Racing

While it has struggled to be an income-generating sport, sports car racing (such as SCCA) is widely popular in the U.S. Like drag racing, it is one of the few racing sports where amateurs can take a street-legal (albeit modified) car to the track and race. 

Hurdles to Making a Race Car Street-Legal

We all know the truth: the type of race cars we are talking about making street legal here are stock and open-wheel cars. The type of people interested in doing this (and who have the resources necessary to pull it off) already know that SCCA-style sports cars are street-legal vehicles, and they know those muscle cars used at the drag strips are street-legal as well.

No, we want to know about the actual race cars. Can you buy a used stock car or even an open-wheel car on eBay and register and tag it for road use? Yes, you can. And we will help you do it.

How Do You Even Get a Race Car?

So, are race cars just waiting to be picked up and made street legal? That depends on the market, to be honest. However, the articles mentioned above are proof that you can do it. 

Today's quick look at eBay did not turn up many turn-key options, but if you are interested in taking on a project, there are plenty of opportunities for you to buy a race car. There is no surplus of engine-less retired NASCAR stock cars just waiting to be turned into LS-powered grocery getters. Likewise, there is no shortage of donor bodies for race car duty.

If you have patience and are willing to wait and stalk eBay, Craigslist, and the Facebook Marketplace, you will eventually find a project worth taking on. 

How Will the State View It?

If you are willing to work and build up a street-legal race car, this would generally fall under a kit-built or replica car, at least in the registration process. At the very least, it will be considered a custom-built car or reconstructed, depending on the state. Since none of the parts will align with a native VIN, the DMV will look at it differently. Suppose you live in a state that doesn’t make registering a hot rod or custom car painful. However, it gets a lot more complicated if you are one of the nearly 90 million California, New York, or Texas residents. However, we have a solution.

What Equipment is Necessary?

Ok, so now you have found your project. Finally, you are ready to get this machine on the road and turn those heads. But before taking the plunge and dumping your fortunes into this project race car, what do you need to do to make it street-legal?

This information is a little harder to acquire than you think. The Department of Transportation does not explicitly state the requirements for cars or light trucks at the federal level, although commercial vehicles are easy to find. This has to do with primarily federal motor carrier regulations since it is an interstate function by nature.

The requirements for light vehicles (cars, trucks, motorcycles) are handled on a state-by-state basis, but the core items remain standard across all states:

• Seat belts (although this is sometimes grandfathered depending on vehicle age)

• Two headlights.

• Turn signals front and rear.

• Two brake lights on the rear, one per side (the third brake light is often not required).

• Two mirrors: One interior and at least one on the vehicle’s driver’s side. 

• License plate lamps. 

• Reverse lamps. 

It is not hard to find kits with the required essential lights to get your race car to the supermarket parking lot from your garage - just make sure you buy a quality kit that will stand the test of time while keeping you safe on the road. Well, as safe as possible in a street-legal race car.

The Dirt Legal Solution

Taking your car from a completed machine to a street-legal completed machine has a couple of steps. First, you need to go ahead and add all of the items to make them legal (lights, mirrors, etc.). As long as they all function appropriately, this process is pretty straightforward. 

The next part is where we come in. We have conveniently outlined why Californians, Texans, Floridians, and New Yorkers ask, “How do I register my car out-of-state?” The reason is that these states all require invasive car inspections. Now, these are nothing more than a nuisance if you roll up in a 2020 Honda Accord and everything is in perfect working order. But kit-built, homebuilt, or race cars are always a work in progress; they might never admit it, but we all know that the registration inspector will look at a homebuilt car with much more scrutiny than they will look at a late-model manufactured car. 

Since race cars were not built for or intended for legal street use, they were not built to be titled. Since they were never intended to be street-driven vehicles, they were not built with VINs, and since they have neither VINs nor a manufacturer’s name to be titled under, some states don’t have a process to make them street legal, or their process is prohibitively exhaustive.

Our Vehicle Titling Service can make your race car street legal. This is your best bet if you have an older race car without prior documentation. In Vermont, cars older than fifteen years are not required to have a title at all; instead, the state of Vermont issues a transferable registration. In most cases, this is what you will receive from us. You can then try to do one of two things: get the transferable registration and then take it to your local DMV and transfer it to your local state to get a new title, or you can also opt to have a Vermont license plate sent out as part of our package.
If you dream of taking a classic race car and making it street legal, we say go for it! Also, we know how difficult it is to deal with most DMVs and how difficult simply tagging and registering your vehicle is. This is why we have streamlined the process for you to the title, register, and tag your street-legal race car. So let’s get that car in gear and on the road today!