Car of the Day

This October 23rd was another trip to the strip for the GTO.  The location for tonight’s racing was the Texas Raceway in Kennedale and is billed as “the FASTEST little racetrack in Texas“.  

It was a cool autum evening with temperatures dipping into the 50s at race time.  Thursday nights at the Texas Raceway are their “Street Legal” race nights.   You get to see all the street racers come out and compete.  The racers vary from, I kid you not, a 1998 Chrysler Grand Caravan to Ford Super Duty Diesels and all the regular cars one would expect like Mustangs, Civics, Camaros, Firebirds, Lightnings, SRT-4 and myriad cast of others.

So what is the measure of speed for a car?  is it the 1/4 mile or 0-60 times?  The 1/8th mile doesn’t get a lot of consideration in this argument, but with a decent racing simulator you can calculate your 0-60 and 1/4 mile times from an 1/8 mile run.  

Tonight the GTO hit a new personal fastest time of 8.22 in the 1/8th mile, that would be good enough for a 12.6 in the 1/4 mile and a trip to 60mph in 4.1 seconds.  

The measure of speed in a lot of cars is very simply a stop light drag.  A street light drag can be legally performed at your local 1/8 mile strip.  Most street cars will cross the finish line at a short track going only 70-90mph.  It is very similar to going from a dead stop to highway speeds.

So once again the GTO proves itself as a very fast street car.  My GTO is slight modded with 160 degree thermostat, a dyno tune, CAI and drag radials.