Bahahahaha! You are completely ignorant to what racing heritage and factory teams did. Two examples of this that people that are on IA own:

1439/2000 BMW 2002
The famous #46 BRE 510:

And my 510:
Both "econo boxes," yet both had factory backing. When has GM factory backed a J body for anything that has to do with professional road racing besides John Lingenfelter? And that wasn't actually factory backing. I won't even get into the racing heritage Honda/Mugen has with the CRX. And a JDM 240SX/Silvia was made with a 2.0l turbo engine, but not marketed as a performance vehicle? You must be kidding. And how about the SE-R Cup cars? A Sentra "econo box" 1 make series....backed by Nissan. Need I go on?
I can pull out Nissan ads that talk about Pete Brock winning 2 championships for Nissan. You don't want to play this game with me.
The bottom line is that a "veteran time attack, Mountain run man" such as yourself wouldn't have made such a novice mistake.....even driving a J body.