I will add my 1.5 pennies on the subject at hand and no doubt upset some, while not my intent, merely how I personally feel.
Many great cars are raced and I for one am thankful that the owners do give us all the experience and opportunity to see them, but replicas are diluting the experience for us all........An extremely example would be, would you rather go to France and see the real Mona Lisa or would your artists friends interpretation of it give you the same experience?
I will make one thing very clear, replicas are fantastic, if its your passion and you can never own real one, please knock yourself out, enjoy yourself, but always and I mean always declare it as such.
Unfortunately, we have people who 'play' with words and I can remember a long time ago somebody calling their beautiful replica of a true Motorsport car "a sister car to the real CSL" it was nothing of the sort and I called it out at the time, this is just one example of course, but there are many others.
A real car is the body/chassis it left the factory with, the one that actually raced in the day. Engines and components break and it is extremely unusual and I mean seriously unusual for a race car to have its original engine, unless it did a very few races -a block and a head a season, maybe even two heads would not have been outlandish, the most we can often hope for is it has the engine it stopped racing with. So what about the real cars that have had things changed, if it's the real chassis/body no problem and as with Old Number One Bentley the courts have decided,. While there is not much in that Bentley that left Crewe in the day, its continuous evolution as that car, namely Old Number One, means it is the original car.
Chris mentioned dilution of the real cars and yes these replicas do dilute the opportunity to see the real cars race for us all. Just think if you have a $1m-$2m real Motorsport CSL and Joe blow has his $100k replica with many modern components in the same field. Original CSL has no chance, its not "man o man" into a corner, its modern components against 50 year old technology and please do not tell me the modern replicas don't "stretch" the technical rules. I was at Spa Classic when a replica CSL claiming it was real (it wasn't) was blasting past 935 Porsches and literally eating the two real CSLs there for breakfast, it didn't even sound like a CSL on full song.
In summation, I would like to see replicas have their own grids, it would still be fun, the owners could still race and be racing against like minded folk with the same risk profile, but risking ones original $1m- $2m car into corner with an enthusiastic driver in a replica becomes less and less appealing over time and therefore does dilute all of our opportunities to see the real cars turn a wheel in anger
Well as the early e9 race cars were all 2800CS prior to the factory 3.0CSLs and much later Batmobiles, it always seems a bit strange to me to call any of the standard 2800CS or 3.0CS coupes a CSL or even a Bat as they were modified later from a standard chassis. This one is a CSL obviously but it was never a Bat. And as Peter G. would agree, the tributes tend to dilute the bloodlines of the true CSLs and Bats. The ad doesn't mention the RHD source either.