JB04GT

Hey guys,

I'm the guy that had a run in with a new Dodge Challenger RT a couple weeks ago and spanked his hieney. Well this afternoon a young college kid with a UCLA parking pass hanging from his rear view mirror wanted to run me. He had a Mazda hatchback, a newer model but I'm not sure what model. A 3? Well anyway, we ran twice. First time from a dig and I missed third with the crappy stock shifter. This mother fudge cake lit me up and all I heard was a swooshing sound everytime he shifted. The second run, I banged the gears precisely but this little Mazda was was only half a cars length behind me the whole god damn time. WTF? We only ran up to about 70mph and I was pulling the longer we went. The question is, what the hell do these little cars have in them. It made me feel like an *** in my big 420HP stock V8. Now I have to go dump money in this S.O.B to kill a Mazda? :-( I was saving $10,000 to either get the 50th anniversary, or if they suck, I would dump that into this car. These young kids though will have me supercharging next month. Damn!

E_cox310

Haha, this is a reason why I don't street race much because I know if I barely beat or get beat by an import or anything that I see as incompetent, I would start buying some more performance parts. To answer your question about WTF he had... who knows, maybe a turbo.

S8ER01Z

Sounds like a Mazda Speed 3, pretty light + turbo... 263HP. He had to have been modded pretty well if you have a stock 5.0. I've pulled them pretty good before from rolls and I can't imagine they do great from a dig (FWD).

http://www.mazdausa.com/MusaWeb/disp...ehicleCode=MS3

Stone629

Probably a full exhaust and tuned Speed3. They get over 300 WHP pretty easily. Don't sweat it too much, I'm sure he has a good bit more done to his car to get it to do that than you do. Not to mention they don't hold over 300-350 WHP very reliably.

JB04GT

Ok, makes sense guys. Never heard or seen a turbo before. Guessing that was the loud swooshing sound I heard. I didn't mention that the second run was from a roll at about 20mph. Like I said, I was pulling as the speed went up. Just impressed how he hung in there. It reminded me though not to sleep on the guys at UCLA and USC, they normally pour tons of money into their cars. When I was in college, I had an 82 Cutlass Supreme. Oh God.......

Derf00

Mazda speed 3's are little monsters. From the factory they are pretty good except for the friggin torque steer because they are FWD.

For under 3 grand it looks like they have some hefty upgrade capabilties. Nothing new in general for a factory turbo'd car though.

http://www.mazdaspeedstore.com/mazda...p-1-c-124.html

And that "Whooshing" sound you you heard was the wastegate.

JB04GT

Derf00,

Thanks for the info.

DocSnickers

It's the whole power to weight ratio's of those lighter cars. Muscle cars are just to heavy to compete on none supercharged scale. Bet you could take him in a road course though.

Derf00

Nnnoooo, I don't think so...

It's all about Power to weight ratio and handling dynamics on a road coarse. A Stock mustang suffers from severe oversteer (tail wagging) and on a road coarse that will kill you. A stock Mazda 3 handles pretty nicely out of the box.

S8ER01Z

3281lbs for the Mazda isn't exactly a featherweight though... he would still have to make near what you do to keep up. (if everything else was equal of course...) Hell that's only 100lbs lighter than my car is.... add in a heavy driver (or a passenger) and it's over. lol


A stock mustang GT would destroy a Mazda Speed 3 on a road coarse. Parking lot full of cones is always going to go to the lighter,nimbler car (though FWD probably is going to pitch that contest in favor to the mustang as well) Have you missed all the reviews where the GT is putting down fantastic times and competing with cars like the M3?

http://www.motortrend.com/roadtests/...n/viewall.html

Nice quote from the article regarding the BMW M3 and Mustang GT...

"Another surprise was the BMW understeers more. A lot more,"