Touge Challenge
There's no better time than a cold, bright December day for a couple of women in bikinis to be at the track. Best Motoring and Hot Version hit the West Coast again for the third installment of American Touge. At Horse Thief Mile at Willow Springs Raceway, Keiicha Tsuchiya and Yasuyuki Kazama put cars from top American tuners to the test. The list of cars getting mashed on included last month's cover star, the Mine's R34 GT-R as well as Cosworth/Dynocomp's STI, XS Engineering's R32, Hasport's CRX, Prototype's Lotus Elise, JIC's Porsche 996TT, among a few others. The K23A supercharged Lotus Elise was a favorite as it dominated in its class, with the JIC Porsche 996 keeping it on its toes. For the title, the surprise performance of the... well, you'll just have to watch the DVD. The Best Motoring crew wouldn't want us to give that away. www.bestmotoringvideo.com
Live From Detroit
What can be said of Detroit that hasn't been said already? The one-time economic powerhouse of America is undergoing a rapidly changing landscape-not changing as in another destroyed building crumbled to the ground, but more like the town's Japanese automakers are on a molten-hot aggressive charge. Not only are Japanese companies continuing to flex, but as far as the Asian market goes, soon everyone and their mother will be peddling a Chinese car.
Toyota has already surpassed Ford to become the No. 2 automaker in the world, and experts have been crunching and feeding numbers into some machine that predicts they may surpass GM in 2007. The Japanese company has brought out the heavy artillery with designs for supercars, the sports sedan sector, full-size truck buyers while continuing to shake the performance world with angry sport compact creations.
Although the LA Auto Show was able to trump Detroit on a handful of debuts, 45 new models dropped at the 100th annual Detroit Auto Show. From concept to production and from stock to modified, the NAIAS 2007 did not disappoint.
Time Attack
Are you sick of looking at this car yet?Well, now you have an incentive to beat it.Because you guys are so money and you don't even know it, we've decided to throw out a little incentive. That's right folks, Primedia is actually going to offer some prize money. We'll give any team that beats a Buttonwillow class record at our Time Attack Finals in November $1,000. And the team that beats Sun Auto's Buttonwillow overall record of 1:48.906 will earn themselves a $2,500 bounty.
So what do you have to do to win the cash-money besides beat some very fast lap times? You first have to place in the top six at one of our Time Attack/NASA TT qualifying rounds to score an invitation to the Buttonwillow Finals. Once you make it to the Finals you'll be competing with the big dogs for the purse. For the full schedule of Time Attack events and rules, go to www.superstreetonline.com.
Above The Rim
With stiff OE-backed competition, the Dai Yoshihara-supported Pacific Rim/Rockstar team is stepping it up this Formula D season. With ink still drying on the contract, the team has announced the acquisition of Taniguchi's old drift-spec HKS S15 Nissan Silvia. That's right, the very same Silvia Taniguchi slid his way into the D1 championship with.
Along with the purchase of the vehicle will come tech and tune support directly from HKS Japan for the entire year-sort of like a manufacturer's warranty, but a whole lot cooler. Look for the S15 smoking it up soon, with its new black and gold uniform. www.iloveracing.com