2006 Ultimate Street Car Challenge

Dyno
To my disappointment, the much-anticipated dyno implosion didn't happen this year, even though we saw numbers higher than previous USCCs (with the exception of 2004's supercharged Viper). But that's what we get for inviting seasoned competitors more intent on winning instead of privateers just up to be king of the dyno hill.

Once again, we implored K&N to use their immaculate facility (with Dynojet all-wheel drive and two-wheel drive dynos) to hold the all-important horsepower pissing contest. More importantly, we begged to have their professional R&D staff run the dyno so I wasn't stuck with trying to strap down 600hp of potential disaster.

Head horsepower honcho was the Skyline GT-R from privateer Dentice. His 666 wheel-hp was the most we've ever seen from an RB26 in all the years of this competition, and 90 more than last year's GT-R USCC winner. Dentice chose to dyno the car in two-wheel drive mode to reduce parasitic losses from driving all four wheels.

Controversy erupted around Danny Young's dramatic pulls. Once four 5-gallon Sparkletts water bottles were loaded into the trunk (to prevent the wheels from spinning off the dyno) his twin-turbo NSX managed to rip off 677 wheel-hp. Although we allowed him to make this pull without catalytic converters (so long as he could get them back on within five minutes for the emissions test immediately after) a shitstorm of complaints erupted from some of the other competitors. Danny graciously agreed to redyno his car with the cats on, which reduced output to only 650 wheel-hp. That's just a four-point drop on our recalculated scale, but all the difference when it comes to grabbing the gold.

Short by 150hp was this year's pushrod-powered RX-7. For all the grief we give the small block, it still turned the most heads and attracted the largest crowd at the dyno. Mike Schaezler's modified 427ci LS7 (that's about 28 bowls in ricer terms) put down 510 naturally aspirated horses, the most we've ever seen at USCC.

In fourth was Crawford Performance's surprisingly-tuned STI, making a reliable and useable 449hp, something we rarely see out of a stock-internal EJ25. We had hoped for more from this NASA Time Trial regular, but the fully built 2.7-liter engine Quirt Crawford intended to compete with took a dump at 1am the night before. Crawford didn't look like he got much sleep.

Even with three years of experience, HPA still managed to cause the most difficulty on the all-wheel drive dyno. The mutant Beetle RSI's fancy Haldex all-wheel-drive system and nitrous twin-intercooler sprayer refused to cooperate, but was still good for 434 wheel-hp.

Bringing up the rear were our underdog favorites. HASport's supercharged K24 CRX posted jaw-dropping front-wheel-drive numbers with its nitrous-powered 381hp pull. The only car to make less than 300 at the wheels was last-minute entry Prototype Racing's supercharged K20 Elise, which arrived at 2pm on the first day of competition still suffering from fuel pressure issues from its just-installed blower upgrade.

With few exceptions, the rankings for power delivery, or area under the horsepower curve, were the same as the peak power numbers. Although some contenders earned a few points here or lost some there, the general trend didn't change, with the exception of the Honda-engined Lotus. Positive-displacement torque and a stratospheric Honda redline pushed it to ninth in power delivery.
-Jay Chen

The Big Picture
What was one of the biggest controversies of Day One quickly disintegrated when the points were tallied. The fact that both the GT-R and NSX were so close to each other, and so much more powerful than the rest of the field, quieted down the whiners.

But the gap is closing. Though Dentice takes the win in both Peak Power and Delivery, Young's close second and HPA's distant fifth and sixth placing mean the NSX and Beetle are now running neck and neck
-Jay Chen