Girlfriend Test
Life is good when you're assigned to judge the comfort level and ride quality of street-legal race cars. No one can kick my ass if I bitch about uncomfortable seats, annoying seatbelt harnesses, neck-jolting suspension parts or deafening exhaust noise. In Leisure 101, many of the cars passed with flying colors. Six of the 10 entrants had air conditioning-usually the first thing to get dumped out of a proper sports car. I could request my own music from an iTunes playlist in one car; I listened to Sting in another.
Predictably, the Ariel Atom finished dead last in this category. Engineering Editor Chen balks that I just don't get it, but I do. I get the fact that this car requires passengers to wear goggles (for fear of bugs flying into your cornea, which occurred while the driver tried to impress me with a blistering zero-to-60mph acceleration run) and a helmet (for fear of long hair flying into the air intake located behind your head). And the photographers definitely got the pictures of me while I crawled in and out. But I give him credit for the rear-view back-up camera he installed, because safety comes first, kids.
I was enamored with the V8-powered 300ZX, but this one was far from perfect. Improperly set up coilovers provided a bumpy, unpleasant ride. I could have forgiven the owner for the lack of air conditioning had this competition been conducted in winter, but August? And with the furnace-like heat roasting my thigh from the revised transmission regress? Not so good.
Loved, loved, loved the BMW 2002, though. It's one of those cars that I still stop and stare at when I see one on the street. But, for the sake of this competition, it finished in the bottom three. It lacked proper cooling, the seatbelt got trapped in the roll cage and it had basic wear and tear typical for a 30-year-old car. This simply didn't cut it in this particular test. Which broke my heart, trust me.-Jackie Liu
The final judgment to be passed on the cars themselves would come from our Engineering Guru panel. As usual, we gathered a small group of respected know-it-alls, gave them a four-post lift and left them alone to dissect and criticize. To those in a hurry, this was a big mistake. Anyone who has ever hung around car guys knows what it's like. They bicker and try to one-up each other constantly. They rarely agree on anything and generally are the last people to consult when pressed for time. But these guys will catch every single detail and modification, and are generally accepted as experts in their fields. They are well beyond being car guys-they're gurus.