After time behind the wheel, it's clear this car isn't a compromise. It's a real race car that just happens to be affordable.

This might just be one of the most fun cars I've ever driven. On the road, on a track, in a video game, it doesn't matter. I was in love with this thing after the first session. Hell, after the first lap, I was hooked. This is a proper race car. There are no driver aids. There are no silly settings that you have to fiddle with. It is proper: no power steering, no power brakes, no traction control, no ABS. It's just you, the machine and your skills, and it will easily spin you around if you're not careful. It does tend to understeer a little bit, but that depends on the way that you set it up, so it's easy to drive around if that's not your style of driving, and overall, it is a pleasure to drive.

It's fast, too. Rush Auto Works claims a race-ready weight of just 1,120 pounds and a 0–60 mph time of 3.3 seconds, and a top speed of up to 152 mph. Instead of a car engine, it uses a motorcycle engine: a sealed 1000cc inline-four based on the Suzuki GSX-S, making 149 horsepower at the wheels and revving all the way to 11,800 rpm. That doesn't sound like a lot of power until you remember how light this thing is. There's no trunk, no passenger seat and no cupholders, just a TIG-welded 4130 steel space frame wrapped in fiberglass panels with a rear diffuser. Power goes to the rear wheels through a six-speed pneumatic sequential gearbox with no-lift upshifts and auto-blip downshifts, and the clutch only comes into play for standing starts. The suspension is fully adjustable, with unequal-length A-arms front and rear, adjustable camber, toe and sway bars, and two-way adjustable shocks, and the brakes are four-piston billet calipers at every corner with bias adjustable from the dash.

Around a track like Buttonwillow in California, it will produce similar lap times to that of a GT4 car for a fraction of the price. It will be within literal tenths of an M4 GT4, for example. Now, take that M4 GT4 out to a big track like Willow Springs or Spa, and the gap will be much different, because that GT4 will definitely pull it on the straights and has an advantage there when it comes to outright straight-line speed and horsepower. But in the corners, this thing easily makes it up. Rush's own data backs this up, too. In its comparison against the Spec Racer Ford Gen3, 2025 GRIDLIFE times put the Rush SR about 4 seconds faster at Road America and roughly 6 seconds quicker at Laguna Seca.

On a twisty track like Buttonwillow, it is one of, if not the most, go-kart-like feeling cars I have ever driven. People often say a car feels like a go-kart when they're talking about something like a Lotus or a Porsche. But this thing weighs less than the fire pit in my backyard and while it can't exactly be compared to a go-kart, you can manipulate it way closer to that of a go-kart than any other car I've driven. Naturally, coming from karting, I felt right at home in this.

This is definitely not a race car you want to step into if you've never driven on a track before. However, if you've had track days in Miatas, Honda Fits or even your road car that you've taken out, and you understand the racing line, trail braking and apexes, it is a car that you will be able to get on top of relatively fast, certainly within a day, even if you've never driven one before. For people going from karts to cars, I would definitely recommend this.

It's also built to be run by real people on real budgets. Rush says it was designed to be maintained in a two-car garage with a basic tool set, no lift or specialized tools required. The front and rear clamshells come off with quick-release latches, and the body panels are small enough to ship in a UPS box, so if you tap a wall on Saturday, you can have a new fender on before Sunday's race.

And the costs are where it really separates itself. The Rush SR starts at $49,995, and the Competition Package, which is required for Rush Spec Series events, adds $9,974, bringing a race-ready car to roughly $60,000. Rush estimates around $14,000 a year to run a full national season, or about $150 per hour of seat time, not including entry fees and transport. By comparison, Rush says prototypes and GT4 cars cost more than $600 an hour. And there's plenty of places to race it: the GRIDLIFE national championship runs at tracks like Road Atlanta, Watkins Glen and Laguna Seca, with events typically drawing 25 to 50 cars, and the car is also legal in NASA, SCCA, SVRA and other organizations.

It's a fantastic stepping point. There isn't a ladder system like with Formula 4 or, say, jumping into the IndyCar ladder. However, for those who don't have those kinds of budgets, it's a great opportunity to get experience in fast cars that don't cost a fortune and aren't Miatas.