Sunday, 28 August 1994. Monterey County CA.
A modest crowd, mostly journalists and industry insiders, has gathered at the venerable speedway. Four marques have presented new designs, hoping to form the back-bone of a new racing league (sponsored by Tasty Gasoline and Pallbero Cigarettes).
The Bogliq Leeroy Pythagoras is a fairly conventional low-slung coupe. The suspension is slightly unusually configured, keeping the car planted but not especially steady [1]. With no driver assists and inexplicably narrow tires, it is a handful through the lower speed sections, but the biggest problem is that it outweighs the competitors by one sumo champion. The brakes are gargantuan, aero lift is untamed, and it really only makes up time on the straights.
Looking like it just graduated from an Ed Roth drawing, the LLA Bullet uses a traditional front-rear layout and a lot of steel. The gearing is more aggressive, but the tires are set up almost for a drag circuit [2]. There’s an impressive show of sparks when it bottoms out following the corkscrew, yet it seems much more composed around the rest of the course.
There’s an interesting chicken-and-egg question about the McKeown GT-C. Is it a track car escaped to the streets, or a road car just waiting for the application of numerous stickers? It looks the part, all brushed aluminum and it is one of the two sporty mid-engine entrants. Around the course, it shows plenty of pace but needs some nerves to really reach the top end. Even with electronic minders, the unconventional brakes [3] command a degree of cautious respect too.
After late nights, extra coffee, and using the Precision Mallet, Scarab Automotive produced a modified Aurora just in time to enter. There’s no doubt about this one, it was always intended to be a racing project. Brake pads are abrasive enough to host their own morning radio show, while the gears are configured just for Laguna, hindering it to the lowest top speed by far. However, once the Aurora got into its groove there was no catching it [4] and Scarab would be flooded with prospective buyers in the coming months as it came with a very agreeable price-tag too.
[1]Springs, dampers, and camber are identical front to rear. The drivability score is significantly behind.
[2] Front tires are about 3 inches narrower than the rears, with no offset. Brakes are again tank turrets.
[3] Solid fronts that are slightly larger than the rears, which have running cleats for pads. Potentially load oversteer.
[4] About 4.5 seconds ahead of the next closest entrant, and within 0.2 of the test car I made. Congratulations.
The winner of Round 3 is @GridGhost !
That isn’t the whole story though. The best racing if not the fastest times were between the Bullet and Pythagoras. The bright orange retro-racer edged this out by six hundredths of a second.
