You may remember the Ultimate Streetcar Challenge from the heyday of Sport Compact Car magazine. Editors Dave Coleman and Josh Jacquot (now Senior Road Test Editor at Inside Line) created the event to find out which reader-built cars were the real deal. The car had to do more than just go fast in a straight line, they had to stop, run a road course and be usable on the street too.
That event ended with the magazine's unfortunate demise years ago, but a similar event has taken up the cause. Dubbed the Optima Batteries Ultimate Streetcar Invitational, the modern version pits the best of the aftermarket tuning crowd in a similar contest of speed, handling and all around driveability. It was held just after last year's SEMA show and will be broadcast on Speed this Saturday at 11:00 AM EST and again on Sunday at 4:00 PM EST.
ACoF says:
01:43 PM, 01/28/10
Take this for what it's worth, but the SCC ultimate street car challenge was more interesting to read. This one was swept almost completely by a '66 cobra. That kind of crap didn't always happen in the SCC version due to the many grading factors the car had to go through. The last test's results are no longer available on the web and I have since lost the magazine, but for the magazine's testing purposes there were quite a number of categories, such as fuel economy, total price of modifications + car, the "girlfriend" test (used to simulate its actual capability as a street car), an emissions test, a drag event, a show-off event (think lots of tire smoke), and a review of aerodynamics by judges, who would break crap off the car if it was just a for show piece.
The idea was that if it was to be a "street" car, then it had to conform to a certain number of different criteria, those listed. If you wanted to up the handling by stripping the car of its interior and putting in a roll cage, you can be sure you'd fail the "girlfriend" test, as she'd be too pissed off to score you well. If you wanted to buy something exotic and crank it out to the moon as if money was no object, you'd pay in emissions, price, and probably the show-off event too, too afraid to break your expensive baby.
In my opinion that was a much more valid and interesting test than seeing 30 '60s and '70s muscle cars duke it out exclusively on the track. There were a couple of fairly new cars in there, but they all got squished or listed as exhibition only. I'd love to see that '66 cobra pass the girlfriend and fuel economy test.
sdiehlman says:
01:45 PM, 01/28/10
R.I.P. Sport Compact Car. I'll tune into SPEED though it's not quite the same.
kevinlch says:
02:36 PM, 01/28/10
am.... sorry, but it's ALL american muscle cars only, wtf is wrong, a meaningless "competition"
tyndago says:
08:38 AM, 01/29/10
Ultimate Street Car Challenge was fun. I did it a number of times. USCC had an interesting mix though the years. A couple Vipers , Mustangs, some other oddball stuff.
Anyone that liked SCC's tech should check out MotoIQ. Most of the SCC guys are over there writing articles.