Ultimate Street Car Challenge - 8 Emissions

14 SkidpadOf all the tests in the USCC, the skidpad is the most boring. Imagine a NASCAR race with one car and no beer. Sure, the engineers (mostly Jay) love the raw data of how many gs a car will pull, but it took an act of God this time to make things relatively interesting.

Prior to our test, some sort of seismic event shattered the normally smooth skidpad, leaving six-inch-wide, tire-debeading, wheel-destroying cracks across the surface. It would have been great for kids playing with GI Joes, but it was really bad for kids playing with ultimate street cars. We considered canceling the test, since the inner area containing our normal 200-foot line was completely toast. The outer 300-foot line was in decent shape, with the exception of a 60-foot segment. Fortunately, there was a straight 10-foot by 60-foot 'bridge' that cut through the cracks to complete the circle. This gave us a 300-foot diameter, flat, tire-shaped track that not only tested ultimate cornering grip, but each car's ability to transition from straight to corner. Not the best conditions, but it would have to do.

Each car did four laps in both directions, with the timing beacon placed opposite the straight. The fastest lap each way was averaged for the g figure-higher gs being better. The results from this test are as accurate as we could get, but should not be compared to other skidpad tests due to the unusual circumstances.

The Ultimate Street Car needs to be versatile and some of the contenders really excelled here. The WRXs of APR and Crawford performed flawlessly. They had good grip around the circle and their all-wheel-drive systems let them tuck in and out of the tight spots with a quick lift and stab of the throttle. The RX-7 would have been right there with them with its amazing balance and power delivery, but it lacked high-speed grip around the circle.

A couple of the cars were really hurt by the transitions and bridge. The NSX had awesome grip but the whole car really needed to rotate in order to cut on and off the straight. There was just not enough room on the narrow bridge for this car to do its thing. The GT-R also suffered from the narrow track, with a peaky powerband that made it difficult to accelerate back onto the circle without launching right off the pavement.

This test was one of the last of the competition and there was no way to hide the flaws of the ailing cars. The blown suspension of the CRX, roasted tires of the Elise, and missing axle of the Beetle all but took them out of a test they might otherwise have dominated.

The clear winner of this competition was the XS Engineering/M-Works 350Z. It handled like the race car it basically is and beat the other cars on its very first lap. By far, this was the easiest car to drive fast around the course.-Andy Hope

The Big PictureAnd then there was one. Crawford Performance did all they could, finishing in second place behind the XS/M-Works Z, but simply ran out of events. All that remained was Gross Display of Horsepower, and even if they managed to score all 25 points, it wouldn't be enough to beat the NSX.

HPA's crippled mechanicals put them just behind Robispec's DNF and solidly in third place overall. There would be no miracle for the Beetle that came so close to winning it all.