NHRA Sport Compact World FinalsFor the closing event of their 2007 drag racing season, the NHRA Sport Compact series returned to the Auto Club Raceway in Pomona, California. The championships still had to be decided and all the competitors showed up aiming to break some records. The Pro FWD class has become stronger and faster with each year, now posting seven-second timeslips as the norm for all front-running cars. The final round became a nail-biting decider, with Marty Ladwig putting up a noble and close effort against eventual champion Gary Gardella and his Chevy Cobalt.
Pro RWD knew only one dominant force all weekend: Titan Motorsports. Brad Personett and the Supra-powered Scion tC set a record time of 6.48 seconds at 218.48mph in elimination and then ran a 6.53-second time in the finals to take the win. Compare that to the ultra-competitive Honda Tuning All-Motor Class, where amazing nine-second passes are the norm. After Leslie Durst-Armendariz's Scion tC broke in Round Two eliminations, Norris Prayoonoto advanced and ran a 9.73-second time in his Clutchmasters Honda Insight to take the win and the 2007 crown in All-Motor.
The big news in the Hot Rod class turned out to be Kenny Tran's championship run. Arriving at Pomona nearly 40 points behind Stephanie Eggum, Tran had his work cut out. But after Eggum broke in the first round, Tran pushed the motor in his Quaker State/Nitto Scion tC in the second round to take the win from Chuck Seitsinger with a ET margin of 0.003 seconds. The engine blew up shortly after the run, but Tran managed to clinch the Hot Rod title by a mere two points.
Mitsubishi Concept-RA
It's been rough watching the Mitsubishi Eclipse devolve rapidly from competent performer into a staid GT, but the Concept-RA could return the coupe to its rightful place in the enthusiast hierarchy.
Taking styling cues from the aggressive shark snout found on the Lancer and sporting a rear end that could easily be mistaken for something from Stuttgart, the low-slung concept harks back to a time when the Eclipse mattered. As such, the tri-diamond crew recognizes that weight is the ultimate buzz-kill, so many of those sleek body panels are made of impact-resistant, recyclable plastic and mounted on an aluminum space frame.
The concept has a 2.2-liter MIVEC four-cylinder diesel, with piezo-electric direct fuel injection, and a turbo sporting both a variable diffuser and variable geometry. Mitsubishi is employing a host of traps and filters in order to meet stringent federal sniffer standards, but clean technology doesn't come at the expense of power.
With 200bhp and 310lb-ft of torque from the blown oil-burner, Mitsubishi saw fit to mate the new twin-clutch SST transmission found on the Evolution X to its acronym-laden all-wheel-drive system. Super All Wheel Control takes in all manner of inputs from the active damping system, yaw control, steering, ABS and traction control to make effective use of the prodigious torque.
Mitsubishi's confluence of green technology and massive hoon potential will have made its debut at the Detroit show by the time you read this, so look for more in next month's issue.
Ten Years Is Too Long:
2018 Mazda3 Design ChallengeAnyone who has left the dregs of MySpace in favor of the (supposedly) greener pastures at Facebook might have heard about a little gauntlet thrown down by the design department at Mazda. The Zoom-Zoom crew sent out an invitation to aspiring artists everywhere to imagine what the 2018 Mazda3 might look like and to sum up that vision in a scant 150 words. Over 300 entrants accepted the Mazda Design Challenge and, after the online voting was tallied, 21-year old Notre Dame industrial design major, Mallory McMorrow, emerged victorious.
Not only did she receive the fame and notoriety that only Facebook could provide, she was able to see her vision brought to life on the floor of the 2007 Los Angeles Auto Show. Over the course of 10 days, a team of Mazda designers rendered the sleek hatch in clay and, after it was completed, both McMorrow and Mazda's director of design, Franz von Holzhausen, were on hand to present the young undergrad's life-size model.
The concept is highly reminiscent of some of von Holzhausen's own creations, including the Kabura and Taiki concepts shown around the world last year. With that in mind, it's not hard to imagine that McMorrow's Mazda3 may actually foretell the future of one of our favorite functional front-drivers.