The Guide to Road Racing: Winding Road Magazine’s ultimate guide to getting your start in racing.
The new Porsche Tequipment two-person roof tent comes in a sleek hard case that was developed at Porsche's performance-oriented Weissach Development Center to be more aerodynamic than your average overlanding setup.
Taking the fabulous BMW 335i and trying to make it better than an M3 is a tempting but difficult exercise. Not only is the M3 a very good car, so is the 335i. If anyone has a chance to pull this off, it would be Dinan, the long-standing mega tuners of BMWs in the U.S.
Here’s where the frustration of dealing with recurring S4 mechanical maladies all but disappears. YouTube is full videos that feature turbo S4s committing various acts of horsepower heroics (like the Nurburgring vid posted above), and that’s due to the devout following of Audi owners on the whole. The unassuming styling of the S4 however, combined with the Biturbo’s ease of tuning make it an Audi favorite despite the car’s relatively short North American lifespan. As such, S4 owners have an extremely broad enthusiast community when it comes to technical help, aftermarket tuning, spare parts, or just friendly camaraderie. In fact, there are so many web sites in cyber land devoted to all things Audi that we could never hope to list them all, but we can offer a few suggestions on groups both big and small.
Most performance enthusiasts—and especially the fans of Q-ship performance—are well aware that the much-loved Biturbo S4 does have a dark side. Yes, Audi was pumping out some cool cars back in the day, but questionable quality, poor reliability, and astronomical repair costs have become a trademark characteristic for Audis of this era. Talk to just about any S4 driver and you’ll get a similar story of mechanical maladies that either total thousands of dollars, or take the car off the road for weeks or months at a time while the owner gathers parts for the repair. As such, the best S4 purchasing advice is to have extra money set aside for repair work. You’ll need it.
In light of Audi’s all-new unveilings at the Frankfurt Motor Show , the timing couldn’t be better for a flashback to one of the company’s defining performance offerings. We’re speaking of course about the Audi S4 sedan that first appeared on Yankee soil way back in 1992. The formula hasn’t changed much over the years, but when it comes down to a specific S4 genre, we look to the second-generation B5-series S4 as the version that roundhouse kicked the sport sedan segment of the day, becoming a performance legend in the process.
As one might expect with a lesser-known performance car, the Turbo Coupe community is a lesser-known group of individuals who not only love the Turbo Coupe, but all iterations of the Fox-Body based, “aero birds” that graced the FoMoCo lineup from 1983-1988. They also love and embrace the same-era Mercury Cougar, which mirrored the Turbo Coupe’s development through 1986 by offering the 2.3 turbo with a five-speed on the rare XR-7 model.
Folks who’ve been considering a Turbo Coupe purchase—especially those with some mechanical know-how—will find prices are surprisingly affordable, with fixer-uppers generally available for under $1000. Be warned though; while these cars have longevity and reliability on their side (more than a few TC owners attest to topping 200,000 miles with just basic maintenance), bringing one back from the dead can become a pricey endeavor.
Now that Ford is getting all excited about turbocharged engines, we thought it might be nice to revisit its original turbo effort from the 1980s. Long before Dearborn coined the term EcoBoost there was just plain boost, force-feeding Ford’s venerable 2.3-liter four-cylinder engine. Enthusiasts will recognize this engine as the force behind other Blue Oval 80s creations like the Mustang SVO and Merkur XR4Ti, but the unmistakably-aero appearance of the 1987-1988 Thunderbird Turbo Coupe holds a place in our enthusiast heart as having the best combination of performance, styling, sportiness, comfort, and gadgetry.
Subaru enthusiasts share a broad enjoyment of just about everything Subaru, with various meets and events happening on almost a daily basis. Given the go-anywhere, all-wheel drive nature of the Subie lineup, back-woods barbeques and off-road events go hand-in-hand with traditional pavement-bound activities—year round.
Turbocharged power funneled through an all-wheel drive platform is often a recipe for a reliability nightmare, but in keeping with its rugged rally-bred existence, the 2002-03 WRX is quite the stout performance machine that takes spirited driving in stride. In fact, the issues most prevalent to would-be WRX owners are actually previous WRX owners, or more accurately, previous owner abuse. General used car shopping guidelines are definitely in effect here, but given the WRX’s youthful and often exuberant audience, extra attention to detail could save you from purchasing someone else’s thrashed-out ragdoll.
Every once in a while a car comes along that transcends the motoring world to become an icon for a generation. Cars like the 1957 Chevy Bel Air and 1965 Ford Mustang may spring to mind as previous icons, and as we enter the final months of the 21st-century’s premier decade, we find there’s a new car to grace that exclusive list: the 2002 Subaru Impreza WRX.
Every hardcore performance ride has an enthusiast following, and while the same kind of race-inspired pedigree may not surround the Syclone/Typhoon, a small but faithful group of gearheads congregate to www.syty.org , online home to the International Syclone Typhoon Owners Association (ISTA and yes, they opt to go O-less for the acronym). International is no typo either; despite a limited production run, Syclones and Typhoons have found homes in such faraway lands as England, Sweden, Germany, and Austria. SyTy.org also lists club chapters for Brazil and Japan, though a visit to both websites suggests activity in those areas might be waning.
The Syclone/Typhoon (often referred to as SyTy by owners and enthusiasts) super trucks were always intended to be niche, limited-production vehicles. Save for a few outlier units in 1992, Syclones were exclusive to the 1991 model year and exclusively black, while Typhoons offered more color and less exclusivity thanks to a production run that spanned 1992 and 1993. As one would expect, the Typhoon is a bit easier to find; nearly 5000 came off the assembly line during its two-year run as opposed to 3000 Syclones, so while these trucks are rather rare, they’re not impossible to find.
Nothing seems to polarize motoring enthusiasts more than the concept of a performance truck, and the NextAutos office is no exception. What kind of absurd mentality could ever conceive such an abomination as a utilitarian vehicle that aspires to be something other than utilitarian? After all, you could bolt plywood to a shopping cart, tie it to a boat, and go water skiing carting if you really wanted to, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to have a blast jumping the wake or cracking the whip into the beach.
Or does it?
I have noted in my previous blogs on GM 4.0 that GM’s remaining core problem is with branding, now that its’ former biggest problems – unit costs and scale costs – are being dealt with through bankruptcy. By branding, I don’t mean marketing B.S., I mean the entire set of perceptions and beliefs that consumers hold about your company or its divisions. Branding addresses the expectations customers have about things they can’t see on a spec sheet or a test drive. It also covers their understanding about how others will perceive what they drive. That stuff is very important.
As one would expect with niche, Japanese tuner cars such as the RX-7, there exists a very dedicated enthusiast community that loves to tweak, tune, and show these cars off every bit as much as driving them.
You may remember a couple months ago, we asked you to give us some ideas for a 24 Hours of LeMons car. In case you missed it, this slightly absurd parody of the French classic, is an endurance race for cars costing $500 or less.
Back then, we had just emptied the Winding Road staff’s pocket change into a number 10 business envelope and sent it as our sponsorship package to some hapless college students masquerading as a “race team.” We also promised to help by enlisting the crack Winding Road readership in suggesting the perfect car/weapon for trouncing LeMons competitors. In return for all this, they promised to tape a copy of a Winding Road logo somewhere on the car.
There’s a good deal of trepidation among first-time Mazda RX-7 shoppers, especially when it comes to the twin-turbo FD-series. The unique rotary engine comes with its own set of issues that generally stem from abuse or poor maintenance, so the key to getting the most from an FD-series RX-7 is knowing how to properly take care of it. Excessive heat is a quick killer for these cars, and the stock temperature gauge doesn’t do a great job of relaying vital information in time to prevent disaster. The under hood hoses are prone to drying out and cracking, so inspect them carefully and if there’s any sign of damage, be wary of potential engine problems as a result from overheating. Most RX-7 owners replace the stock hoses with high-temp silicone hoses that can better withstand the heat, so consider their replacement a good thing. Aftermarket temperature gauges are also common, and though these cars never came with a factory boost gauge, they’re a common addition as well.
A perennial favorite of sports car enthusiasts worldwide, the Mazda RX-7 exemplifies the epitome of balanced handling, graceful lines, and communicative controls; three very important ingredients in creating a quintessential driver’s car. As good as the early-generation RX-7s were however, they still lacked a key fourth ingredient—power.
Up until this weekend, we had never heard of Itasca, Illinois, a small suburb located about thirty minutes northwest of downtown Chicago. But on Saturday morning, this town was offically christened into the Guinness world record books for hosting the longest parade of any one type of vehicle, as a grand total of 339 Subarus paraded around the city, horns honking, turbocharged 2.5-liter fours revving. Subaru owners love their cars, and some folks that we met pride themselves on being die-hard Scooby loyalists.
I recently had the opportunity to spend a few hours with Dave Smith, CEO of Factory Five Racing at Factory Five’s headquarters in Wareham, Massachusetts. While the original intent was to drive Factory Five’s most recent offering, the ’33 Ford Hot Rod, events conspired to prevent that drive (as they often do with small companies). In a way, that worked out well, because Smith and I had more time to tour FFR’s facility and talk about the car business.
In essence, simply owning a BMW grants you an all-access pass to an all-encompassing, purebred group that’s arguably the largest, most dedicated, and most fanatical community of motoring enthusiasts in the world. Obviously the M cars are the poster children for this segment, but attend any type of BMW event and you’ll likely see a wide range of new and old Bimmers, everything from high-end M machines to highly modified variations of 3 and 5-Series cars, stock sedans, convertibles, and yes, SUVs. If it says BMW, then it’s welcome, and whether it’s a brand new M3 or a decades-old 2002, the owners all have one thing in common: They love live to drive these cars, and I’m not just talking about leisurely Sunday afternoon jaunts through the local neighborhood. To support this addiction (or perhaps because of it), BMW enthusiasts the world over have no shortage of online resources to draw from, but for the M3 owner, three web destinations stand out from the rest.
