#UNTIL I FOUND CALIP OUTSIDE?? AND HE'S A GUY??

[concernedbrownbread]

Oh, to be traversing through Kakariko, reading gay lil journal entries HANG ON THAT'S A GAY LIL JOUNRAL ENTRY

[cars4starters]

What is it?

Wow. After all these years Subaru’s WRX still hits the spot.

I’ve been driving these cars since day one and 20 years later the turbocharged boy racer is definitely showing a new found maturity.

The biggest improvement is evident in the cabin which is now a much nicer place in which to spend time. All the tacky, hard plastics have gone bye-bye, replaced by premium, soft touch, higher quality materials.

In a way the car really needed to evolve in this direction to keep pace with its aging buyers. Most of the time you see a Rex on the road the driver is grey haired. Hell, my accountant is on his third or fourth WRX and he’s no spring chicken.

    What’s it cost?

Prices kick off from $39,240 for the entry level sedan with a 6-speed manual. There’s no hatch anymore, but there is a wagon, although they call it the Levorg – but that’s another story.

It’s amazing Subaru has been able to keep a lid on the price for so long, given the fit and finish and levels of equipment fitted. Last updated around the middle of last year the current model has been “heavily revised” both mechanically and cosmetically.

In the go fast department, there’s better brake pads that provide superior fade resistance, with red brake calipers front and back and new dark look 18-inch alloys, fitted with Dunlop SP Sport Maxx RT.

The suspension has also been revised, with LED fog lights and heated door mirrors added.

The LED powered headlights follow the steering wheel.

The base model, the subject of our test, comes with cloth seats and two zone climate air, along with red-stitched sports seats, push button start, auto lights and wipers (but not rear view mirror), 6.2-inch touchscreen and 6-speaker CD audio.

The manual misses out on the latest advances in safety including Subaru’s version of auto emergency braking called EyeSight.

You’re asked to pay more for them with the Premium model.

There’s also no satnav, no digital radio and no Apple CarPlay or Android Auto — both glaringly absent. Doesn’t particularly worry me, but it does mean you can’t display Waze or Google Maps on the car’s computer screen.

Subaru says changes for Model Year 2018 are focused on creating an even more engaging interior design and raising quality, with more cohesive interior finish and a greater sense of performance potential.

Interior decorations with liberal use of piano black finish provide a sportier, more elegant feel.

    What’s it go like?

Wayne? If you’re reading this? You’ve gotta come for a spin in this one mate. If you thought the BRZ was cracker, wait until I’ve taken you for a ride in this one mon ami.

I took my old mate Wayne for a ride in the BRZ and scared the crap out of him. BRZ will leave ’em gasping

Wayne’s a tough guy. Once a nightclub bouncer and gang member in his younger days, he’s not someone you want to pick a fight with — I’ve got a chipped tooth to prove it.

Mate. The WRX has got turbocharged engine with 197kW of power and 350Nm of torque, compared with the BRZ’s 152kW/212Nm — basically that means it can do everything the BRZ can and more.

It’s also all-wheel drive, rather than rear wheel drive, with torque vectoring and a limited slip rear diff in the manual to help the car corner flatter and faster. Do you hear that mate — faster?

Sure. The STI gets more power and torque again — 221kW and 407Nm — but trust me you don’t really need it.

That bloody great wing on the back must weight a bit because it’s 72kg heavier and the front spoiler is so low you’re going to have trouble on driveways.

The sports buckets in the STI are also damn uncomfortable, narrow with high sides that make sliding in and out a chore for big blokes.

Bottom line. The WRX is more comfortable and has all the power you need.

In fourth gear, with 4000 revs showing on the dial, it’s feels just about unbeatable charging up a mountain pass.

The dash from 0-100km/h takes 6.0 seconds, but it takes some practice to achieve this.

You’ll notice newcomers to the car grappling with the change.

Short shifting works best. Give it a squirt in first gear, then quick as you can get into second. Another squirt will take you to third and into the sweet zone.

Fourth gear is probably the place you’ll spend time, working the car from corner to corner, only needing to change down for really tight bends.

A CVT auto is available for an extra three grand and it is probably the best CVT we’ve driven, but the 6-speed manual falls so easily to hand and is so easy to use — why would you bother?

There’s no turbo lag in this car and the delivery of power is smooth and very linear, instead of coming in with a bang.

The seating position is higher than BRZ and that makes the car easier to get in and out of, with manual height adjustment for the driver’s seat.

There’s not a lot of audible feedback inside the car, but those outside seem to hear it coming.

Rated at 9.2L/100km we were getting 9.6L/100km after 400km.

    What we like?

It’s a WRX

High quality finish

Comfy seats

Small stylish rear spoiler

  What we don’t?

No satnav in base model

Dash too busy with three competing information screens

No EyeSight – Subaru’s auto braking system (only with auto)

Phone slow to reconnect (doesn’t connect at all after swapping phones)

Measly 3 Year/Unlimited kilometre warranty

  The bottom line?

At less than $40K the WRX is still the best bang for your buck going.

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    Untitled #cars4start What is it? Wow. After all these years Subaru's WRX still hits the spot. I've been driving these cars since day one and 20 years later the turbocharged boy racer is definitely showing a new found maturity.

[itsworn]

Drag Strip Testing an LS6 1971 Corvette

Car Craft Editor Terry Cook surely aspired to something greater. He delighted in assaulting and deconstructing preconceptions. While we wore the trendy rags of the day, he insisted on suits and he knotted nutty ties. Rather than a Tri-Five, a Chevelle or any piece American Iron, he aspired to and drove a freakin’ Morgan- four-bore motor and a frame made out of wood. We were further disoriented when he announced his project hot rod was going to be a fiberglass four-door T nudged by a turbocharged Vega four-popper. Beyond the norm.

Cook was enamored of the Car&Driver philosophy and its editorial execution, as well as key players Leon Mandel and Brock Yates, and for a while he modeled some of Car Craft’s physical production after theirs. Road tests or drag tests or whatever you want to call them, were published without a byline or even a photo credit, as this was policy at the precious New York-based magazine.

Ed Baumgarten .c. Mid America Motorworks

It was policy that CC tech stories leak as much minutia, detail and as many decimal points as possible, because that’s what readers had come to expect from the premier drag racing publication. By the time we were done, column inches had jacked into column-yards, which inevitably overwhelmed the photographic presentation. Cheeky Cook ruffled another feather or two by running carry-over copy in the front of the magazine, rather than the back half as is tradition.

The story here is what I thought I’d remembered and had included in the original copy for “Goodbye Forever LS-6.” I didn’t hit the nail. I barely hit the wall. Truthfully, I don’t even remember if I was the one that wrote it, though the sophomoric slop in it leads me to believe I did. The stuff I missed is astounding.

Most of the time, what you think you remember isn’t how it happened at all. I know. I’ve proven it to myself time and again, because I can look at one of my centuries-old magazine stories and it will tell me so. It can’t be wrong, can it? Sometimes I have to ask someone who was there at the time, and most times I can find a witness. This is about one of those times. But these old days, some of the faithful have already passed on, so I’m on my own here.

In the late sixties/early seventies, if you wanted to traverse the greater Los Angeles landscape in a Chevy, you called the Western Region guy, Wayne Thoms, an affable and accommodating human being if there ever was. He had the go-fast gene, too, even if it was a vicarious one. The length of time you’d spend with the car was strictly up to him, but a month was the usual term—he had to make allowances for the mechanical work you planned to throw at the car as well as the time required to take the hop-up stuff off. More often than not, we’d be grinding the mule for at least two months.

Ed Baumgarten .c. Mid America Motorworks

There was an unwritten agenda at Car Craft: whatever it was, made sure that it ran better than one tested by anyone else. If it didn’t the first time out, you just kept at it. The very least, there were tacit rivalries with Cars, Hot Rod, Popular Hot Rodding and Super Stock & Drag Illustrated, so when Wayne dangled the Ontario Orange C3 under our noses like a maggoty goat carcass to a turkey vulture, we could not refuse.

It had the most powerful motor, so how could we refuse? For its final appearance on the world stage, the once mighty RPO LS6 454 was included in the ZR2 package (Special Purpose LS6 Engine Package) that also featured heavy duty power brakes, an M-22 transmission, transistor ignition, special aluminum radiator with metal fan shrouds, springs, shock absorbers and stabilizer bars for a premium of $1747.

The LS6 had been neutered by much milder events for the solid lifter camshaft and a 9.0:1 dog-brain compression ratio so that it would live on leaded regular (and later the unleaded pee that would be mandatory for the impending catalytic converter.) Quite a way from the race-like 11.25:1 of the 1970 LS6, it still advertised 425hp at 5,600 rpm and 475 lb-ft at 4,000 rpm. Its big 800cfm Holley still threatened in a way the pedestrian Quadra-Jet couldn’t hope to. The cylinder heads were aluminum and featured an open combustion chamber design. Volume was 119.09cc’s. The mechanical lifters were lashed hot at 0.024- and 0.028-inches. Chevy stuttered that the drop in compression for the 1971 LS6 would accommodate regular fuel. It didn’t. It bucked and pinged and wasn’t happy until it was slugging high-test hooch.

Ed Baumgarten .c. Mid America Motorworks

Since most of us preferred tooling a clutch car, that whiney Muncie M-22 close-ratio had more than siren appeal. A diaphragm clutch with a 1,800-pound spring load operated dual 10-inch discs that had aluminum-backed facings and asbestos pads. The steel flywheel weighed 33 pounds. The system behaved well at high rpm and worked without flaw in front of the rock-eating Muncie. Zoom supplied the 4.56:1 gears, and we took the Corvette to Bob Heacox at Scat Enterprises for the installation.

Then we relieved the motor of its nominal cast iron manifolds that had been used to make the factory packaging as simple and as cost-effective as possible. Anyone who wanted the most from the 454 would likely strap on some headers, in this case Hedman (part HH-9) with 2-inch primaries and a 3-inch collector. Then some original BS: “To give the car the rally look (what exactly did that look like?) and an incredibly obnoxious sound, the Thrush Outsiders were plumbed into the header system and fitted below the rocker panels.”

Like the side pipes, the drone continued: “The car was an absolute bear on the street. The side pipes gave it primal sound and appearance and the Hedman headers relieved the congestion. But the biggest visceral boost came from the lower gears. Instead of taking two city blocks to go through the gears, it could be accomplished in half a block, all the while pinning you tightly against the seat.”

Then some more clunky copy: “The [lower numerical] gear ratio naturally meant that the engine would be turning at a higher rate, hence it would be louder. That volume, when multiplied by the Thrush pipes and the fact that one sat directly next to the exhaust exit meant that the driver was subjected to a fantastic amount of noise harmonics resulting in ringing ears for hours afterwards.” Sometimes, I think I still have them.

The Formula 1 L70-15 tires that were mated with 8.5-inch-wide ET Uni-Lug wheels were actually destined for a pick-up truck that belonged to the editor of Hot Rod Industry News, then a Petersen service publication. He’d sweet-talked me into scamming them, but much to my chagrin (tongue-in-cheek here), they were too large for the Corvette’s wheel houses and interfered with them long before the steering went to full lock. They did an atrocious job of visually overpowering the car. All we could was put them on for the beauty shots and roll them out of sight as soon as we were done.

My partner in this sublime stew of tomfoolery was the late Steve Collison. He lived to cut lights and pull gears like Dave Strickler. The Corvette was equipped with Wide Oval F70x15 tires. There was a trick to running bias-plies; if you got the air pressure to around 12psi, the tire would flatten out enough to give a scoche more bite from the pitiful, maybe-six-inch-wide bias-plies, and this worked especially well with an automatic. With a high-powered clutch car, it was a completely different deal. The Rat’s grunt pulverized ‘em.

To shake up the clocks with some sensational numbers, sticky drive tires were inevitable. There was just one small problem. The slicks were off one of Steve’s Chevelles, 9-inch Goodyears, and he’d screwed ‘em to steel rims. We jacked up the car and put them on. Everything was cool until he tried to drive it away. In our haste, we’d neglected to see that the inside of the steely wasn’t quite large enough to clear the calipers. When he let the clutch out, the car lurched and stopped just as quickly, as the rims grunched the calipers, flattening the bleed valve on one of them.

So then, skill not slicks would be the deciding factor.

There were two distinct episodes with this car. The antagonist was staffer Larry Schreib, an ex-Marine officer who had a way of doing things that the rest of us reefer-maddened liberals couldn’t fathom. Shortly after his CC gig, Larry proved his mettle as a founder of S-A Design. If you ever fooled with a small-block, you’ve probably thumbed one of Larry’s books. More on him in a minute.

Ed Baumgarten .c. Mid America Motorworks

Steve and I had previously established our routine behind the Orange Curtain at the OCIR outpost. As usual, operator Steve Evans had left the joint wide open for us- electricity on, clocks primed, and nobody there to stop us from the inevitable mayhem. As soon as we’d arrived, Steve went on his “I’m going to be top dog” rant, like he had to honor some sort of street-racing imperative down by the airport where he lived.

He banged gears a few times but was not satisfied with his efforts. I got in and found the groove right away and got the car off the line without smoking the tires or bogging the motor. I caught all the gears. The pass was clean, felt right. When I got back to the bleach box, Steve was whooping about what a grand pass it was. He said he could tell as soon as the car left the line. Too bad he’d forgotten to reset the clocks.

The best of five Pure Stock passes at OCIR on the Goodyear F70-15 Wide Ovals on the stock 8.5-inch steel rims netted a 13.72 at 102.04. The tires spun like crazy through Low. Between the 3.36s and less-than-able spark plugs, the motor coughed at the top of each gear and cleared the traps turning less than 5,000rpm in Third gear. We knew that this outing was just a warm-up and that we’d be coming back with guns and egos blazing.

I slipped away and made the long drive home just a little disappointed.

With the car packing its load of aftermarket goodies, we went down south again for the second round. We reset the valve lash and screwed in some fresh AC 45 XLS spark plugs. Here, memory fails again. I’m not sure who drove this time; maybe it was both of us. Talk was that 12.8’s on street tires were normal. Slipping off the line without undue wheel-spin and shifting at 6,500rpm, we ran a best of 12.64 at 114.21 and 12.65 at 114.35. I don’t remember if that made us smile or not but it was better than anything the competition could do.

A few days later it was, Larry Schreib decided that he wanted a piece of the LS6 and he got the keys and took it to Lions. The next thing that happened, the car was on the hook, vital humors seeping from somewhere deep inside it. Ol’ Lar had put a rod through the block. Ol’ Wayne Thoms wasn’t exactly inviting us to lunch the next day. The last that anybody saw of the Ontario Orange fiberglass, it was dangling from tow truck. That was in June or July of ’71.

Thirty-three years after the fact, I got call from Mike Yager, the head cheerleader at Mid America Motorworks. “Remember that Car Craft LS6 we talked about a few months ago, the one with the 4-speed that you and Steve Collison had drag tested?” he said. “I have it now, documented and all.” Then he was gone.

He sent the images you see here. He also included a fact sheet from the Mecum Auction. Seems Zora Duntov had driven the same Corvette for a Car & Driver test (6/71). It had the earliest known LS6 VIN. It had been equipped with power everything, but did not include air conditioning. It still has the burn marks from the headers, as well as the 4.56 gears it got for the test that never was.

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