new sports car

(piano music) (electronic music) - they designed this carto be a car that somebody that appreciates the experienceof driving would enjoy. it's just really well balanced. - the car is a fun car to mod, a fun car to drive, and the possibilities are endless. - i'm caitlin hall with continental tire

and we are here today at thestreets of willow springs for the 86 showdown. the reason this week that we are here is to be able to bring ourtires to this enthusiast market and give us feedback. feedback today has been very positive and the questions they'vebeen asking is the exact things that our engineersneed to hear and to help them develop this tire to make itexactly what these drivers

are looking for for the track. a fun car to drive. i just upgraded to thejackson racing c38 charger. we had it installed and we had it tuned and everything. ready to go in less than a week. - i'm driving my 2013 scion fr-s. it's running an edelbrock supercharger. we have the delicioustuning flex fuel kit,

so i run a combination ofe85 and 91 octane fuel. we pretty much havewhiteline's complete catalogue on the vehicle, swaybars, all the bushings, adjustable lower control arms. i'm actually running a setof our prototype coilovers, which are due to be released next year. i'm here to have fun. i'm here to hang outwith a lot of the great drivers that i know and love.

but, no, the track itselfis great in location, two hours from home, youcan't beat that, right? - we're from the san francisco bay area. it was about a seven hour drive with towing coming down here. we actually got here pretty late. we got to the hotel at around three, we got a couple hours of sleep. everything is working out so far.

right now we are running stomp motors, basic bolt-ons, you know lsd, os geckons, cruise control arms, andkraftwerks supercharger. personally, i drive a lot of fr cars. it's just the design withthe weight distribution and the rear wheel drive factor. the chassis is very nice. it's very forgiving andit holds a lot of power. - this is my first time outhere at street of willow

and i wasn't exactly surewhat was going to be a good set up so all i did wasjust leave it how it was. there's a whole bunch of stuffthat's been done to this car. nothing except for therear control arms are stock on the suspension, fullexhaust, built motor, i've done some arrow, includingsome parts from the apr. it's doing really well. these continental 340treadwear extreme contact tires are actually doing quite well.

i'm not experiencingmuch at all understeer. and the oversteer behavior is really good. it's really nice, progressive breakaway. the car is being very very well behaved. - well the 86, to me,is a pretty neutral car. with our turbo kit, too,we get that extra power to be able to put downand use all the suspension and be able to use the carfor what i think it was originally intended with the extra power.

it's pretty fun to seehow everybody kind of matches up against each other. we definitely have a lot ofpower to put to the ground and the tires haveactually done surprisingly well for a street tire. the durability is more than i expected and the initial grip earlier in the day was actually really impressive. - i'm driving a scion fr-s.

it's a show car, but they'veconverted a few things to make it a track-ready vehicle. they had air bags on it before and they just swapped on some kwv3s, so that's a tremendous help for a track, having a full coil over it. this isn't my first timeat streets of willow. i have quite a bit of seat time here. i started driving here four years ago.

it's not my favorite track, but it's a good track to test handling. the tires have beensurprisingly very nice. i'm very impressed with them. for such a high tread wear,they have a lot of grip and they've been reallyconsistent and progressive throughout the whole day. - so these are great for enthusiasts that are going to havetheir regular everyday cars

and want to go out andhave a good track day. it has similar compounds towhat we have run in the past on our extreme contact dw. we have stiffened thesidewall with higher apexes to improve the sidewall handling and should help improveespecially in the curves to really get the bestperformance out of them. - we try to participatein as many of these events that are proposed to us.

it all started becausemost of us in the office are grassroots ourselves enthusiasts, so it's just something welike to participate in. keep it going becausethis sport cannot die. it won't, it won't be ahappy place if we don't have a grassroots motor sports. - it's not easy being thefirst time out on the track. a number of the people out heredriving today are my friends and i'm having a great time with them.

i'm managing to hang in therepretty good in the field, so i'm pretty excited about that. the other thing that's kindof interesting about my car is that it's actually anautomatic not a manual car. so the automatic's doingsome work out here today and i'm pretty pleased with how i'm doing. - today i'm just out here to have fun, put some fast times down, maybe beat my personal best.

this is my first timedriving a rear wheel drive. it's totally different. the lines are different. i do like the oversteerrather than the understeer. but it feels good. - i really like the 8-6 platform. i'm a huge rear wheel drive fan. i have an s2000 background, so being in the 8-6 feels pretty at home.

really forgiving on the oversteer, although it does let the back end out. - competition is very tough. a lot of fast cars and drivers. i think two secondswould be a lot to shave, but maybe a second. that would be my goal for today. we will have to step it up. - there's a lot of competition,

a lot of very veryexperienced drivers out here. most of them are going faster than i am, which i'm actually comfortable with. i'm out here to have a good time. take advantage of a lot of the benefits that super street andcontinental are offering us. the tires are performing great. they're really holding up to the heat. i would say other tires probably

wouldn't be holding up as well. - i was really hoping topodium today for the team. so hopefully we made it. i would love to be back out next year if there's another competition and if they need another driver then i would be morethan willing to come out. it's always a good time. - i think we did pretty good.

we hit a 124 at section two. it felt great, yeah. we put in a lot of hard work, my team. so everybody is happy. we can do it all over again as long as we can take first place again. so it paid off. if they have another86 showdown next year, we're definitely going to enter.

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