OPTIMA Batteries Ultimate Street Car Invitational - Cobra’s and Carnage!!
December 13th, 2009The 2009 OUSCI challenged 50 of the best cars in the world to showcase their performance and styling at Spring Mountain Motorsports Ranch in Pahrump, Nevada on Saturday November 7th. Based on participant and sponsor feedback, the 2009 OUSCI was huge success. Within a week after the event, there are over 100 pages of forum coverage and there are over 30 media outlets expected to provide coverage in the upcoming months.
The 2009 OUSCI was also covered in high-definition by BCII, famous for creating the automotive show “Rides”, “Overhaulin’”, and “Livin’ the Low Life”. The event will broadcast on SPEED on January 30 and 31, 2010. The SPEED TV coverage of the event confirms the importance and relevance of such an event and drives home the point that cars are meant to driven.
The seed of the OUSCI was an idea from Cam Douglass who shared his frustration that many SEMA feature cars looked great, but there was not a venue at which to test their performance. Upon sharing his idea with Jimi Day at FM3 Performance Marketing, the OUSCI was born. The idea was to take 50 feature cars from the SEMA show - the worlds largest automotive aftermarket industry trade show - and put them on a track to highlight handling, acceleration/braking and styling to determine which of them really is “The Ultimate Street Car”.
The inaugural event in 2008 had 27 cars with 11 finishers. Source Interlink was the only media coverage for the event, however, they did a great job. The forums exploded with news and coverage of the event and many changes and improvements were made for 2009. A full field of 52 cars were present at the opening and a full week of buildup at the SEMA show had everyone’s anticipation level very high. Media coverage was huge, and a bus was rented to get them all to the event on Saturday. A blogger outreach program was integrated into the festivities with track day arranged on Friday to integrate them into the event. 200 plus spectators showed up at the event and it took a crew of 40 people to run the event. Excellent progress for a second year event!
Saturday morning broke to the sounds of throaty V8’s and the smell of race gas as competitors arrived at the track. Tech inspection went smoothly with all but two cars passing. At the drivers meeting, the rules were clarified and questions were answered and the drivers received their wristbands to access the track. The first track session, a warm up session to familiarize the drivers with the track started at 9:30 and the first car promptly spun off the track and into the desert. The carnage had begun - Jim McKamey, in Bruce Camburn’s original 66 Cobra, spun out on the warm up laps! He was brought into the pits and warned of the consequences of another off-track excursion. Little did we know this was just the start…
Throughout the day at the BFGoodrich Hot Lap Challenge, there were eight cars that spun, wrecked or broke something that required them to retire for the day. The constant delays pushed the road course action well into the evening and there was just enough light at the end of the day to capture a sponsor shot - the three primary sponsors on track at the same time. And wouldn’t you know, one of those cars spun off the track as well.
The Ridetech Street Challenge Autocross proved to be one of the more popular events of the day with a wide, fast track set-up for the TV crews. Much tire smoke, squealing tires and drifting through the cones will make for some fun editing in the video booth. Not much carnage there but loads of fun.
The Baer Brakes Speed Stop Challenge was just that - a real challenge as full bodied 3500+ pound muscle cars explored the limits of their braking capacity. Scott Parkhurst’s Conestoga Chevy wagon discovered quickly why there’s a berm between the end of the Speed-Stop course and the hot race track! Bill Howell also figured out just how much stress his upper control arm can’t handle!
The Speed by Spectre Design Build Challenge may have provided the judging panel with the biggest challenge - not only was the Street Machine of the Year in attendance and competing, but several others that had won design awards at the SEMA show were also on hand. In the end, the Roadster SHops 62 Corvette won the event and Josh Henning’s 67 Chevelle, invited at the SEMA show, finished a close second.
Next year’s event is already being planned with more improvements and more changes in store. Saturday November 6th 2010 is going to be an exciting day and many enthusiasts and car owners are already looking forward!!
For complete coverage and images of the event, visit www.optimainvitational.com.
