Not Just Exhibitionists- OPTIMA Batteries Ultimate Street Car Invitational


Debuting this past Saturday on Speed TV was the one-hour OPTIMA Batteries Ultimate Street Car Invitational. Hooniverse caught the show, and we can tell you that the winning car was . . .
. . . the one that scored the most points. You didn’t think we’d spoil the surprise did you? Now, you might ask yourself, what is the OPTIMA Batteries Ultimate Street Car Invitational? You might also ask, why is it’s name so long? We can help you on both of those accounts.

Have you ever watched one of those body builder contests? You know, the ones with all the Ah-nold schwarzenegger types all oiled up and wearing way too-small culottes?  While they strive for that bulked up appearance, they’re so muscle-bound they can’t really do any amazing feats of strength. That’s kind of how SEMA show cars are- the purpose of the cars is to demonstrate all the cool go-faster hardware, but usually the cars are so meticulously prepared that the thought of actually yanking one off the show floor and putting tire to track would cause their handlers to throw up in their mouths a little bit. Despite the threat of collateral spewage, that’s exactly what OPTIMA Batteries did- they invited (hence the Invitational) 46 cars from the show floor to the Spring Mountain Motorsports Ranch in Pahrump Nevada (that’s right, Pahrump) for a triple threat performance shootout pitting stocker against rocker.
The OPTIMA Batteries Ultimate Street Car Invitational is designed to give builders and owners of some the world’s most awesome streetcars the opportunity to show their stuff on a closed circuit professional road racing course. Cam Douglass, the Director of Marketing and Product Development for OPTIMA came up with the idea for the one-day gathering, to take place at the SEMA show’s close, and the 2009 event was its sophomore run.
Thirty drivers and competitive class cars, as well as 16 exhibition cars undertook a baptism of fire in three performance tests, and a beauty pageant of sorts. The performance runs taxed both car and driver, and were broken into accelaration/braking, autocross, and road course segments. The styling portion was intended to judge overall craftsmanship, quality and engineering. None of the cars invited to participate were purpose-built racers, and had to run DOT-grade 180+ treadwear tires. But that didn’t mean that the cars that showed up weren’t ready to rock.


And what kind of cars did show up? Well, pretty much everything you’d expect, including every flavor of Camaro, both classic and contemporary Mustang, Chargers and Cudas, and even a 2008 Bentley GT Speed. The exhibition class had a GTR representing, a Z06 Vette and an Infiniti G35 that eats something interesting for lunch- transmissions. And the whole show was captured by cameras in a 2009 ZR1, driven by racer Jim Holloway. The track at Spring Mountain, situated just off of Hwy 160, is like an oasis in asphalt, with a North-South track encompassing 2.2 miles, and used for the road course portion of the event.
The trailer will give you a taste of the track:


The first performance event was a zero to sixty to zero timed test. Most of the cars had more problems with the electronic timing equipment than with the actual run and flat-spotted tires were the rule, not the exception.
After the acceleration/braking test, the cars moved on to the autocross. Here, almost Top Gear USA host Tanner Foust demo’d how to take the course sideways, and generated so much smoke that they likely had to divert traffic at McCarran International Airport.
The road course provided the best soundtrack to the event, as well as the most drama as the heavily modded G35 blew its driveline all over the track. While not quite as dramatic, watching a SEMA-prepped Malibu or hairy-chested Cobra take to the track like a turpentined cat makes you wish it was you behind the wheel.

At the end of the day, The OPTIMA Batteries Ultimate Street Car Invitational gathered together over $15,000,000 worth of iron, with over 25,000 collective horsepower. And, unlike at SEMA these are all moving displays. One car stood above all others, and it had to stand pretty tall to do so, so strong was the competition. Check out the Speed TV schedule for repeats of the show to find out which car that was. And get ready for this year’s event, when once again SEMA’s best go from the Vegas strip to the drag strip.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

The maximum upload file size: 64 MB. You can upload: image, audio, video. Links to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other services inserted in the comment text will be automatically embedded. Drop files here

  1. LTDScott Avatar

    I saw the line up of cars for this event when I was at SEMA and there was some seriously cool machinery. I only wished I could have stayed to watch the actual event in person. I'll have to set up my DVR!

  2. lilwillie Avatar

    I won't ruin it. EXCELLENT series to watch just for the fun of seeing cars that nice thrashed like they should

  3. engineerd Avatar

    Wow, thanks for alerting me to this.
    SEMA always intrigued me. It always seemed over the top crazy. It always bugged me, too. Most of the show cars there look like the last time they saw a street was when they came off the dealer's lot. While SEMA is one of the major celebrations of car culture, it's hard for me to respect show queens with no go. This OBUSCI seems to take the ones that can go and pits them against each other to see how well they go. Nice.

  4. BЯдΖǐL-ЯЄРΘЯΤЄЯ Avatar
    BЯдΖǐL-ЯЄРΘЯΤЄЯ

    This is fine news, finely there are men that hoon the machines the way they where ment to do. I hope Speed tv will transmitt it in Brazil.

  5. CptSevere Avatar
    CptSevere

    Par-hump? That's not right, it's PAH-rump. West of Vegas, on Highway 180, close by the California border. PAH, not par, even though my DeLorme atlas tells me there's a golf course there. Also, it's NeVAda, not NeVAHda. They get touchy about how you pronounce their state. It's the same idea as going to San Francisco and calling the place Frisco, they hate that. It's San Fran for short.
    This event clearly puts the PAH in Pahrump. Calling this fine community ParHump is bad manners, like calling my town Dumbstone.

  6. muthalovin Avatar

    Nice. Show cars serve a purpose, but this sounds like something awesome. Awesome to the MAX. But I could just imagine rolling a show car.

  7. omg grip Avatar
    omg grip

    sort of like Sport Compact Car's annual street car challenge, but for those with relatively unlimited budget constraints.

  8. acarr260 Avatar

    I caught part of this on Speed last weekend (I think), but I had to leave for a poker game. The part that I saw was really interesting. I found it really cool how they were really thrashing these cars around the various courses.

  9. grznfsih Avatar

    JTmI9C ubtdypzhnlhn, [url=http://uehuefldblit.com/]uehuefldblit[/url], [link=http://yorcpctmpdhk.com/]yorcpctmpdhk[/link], http://nuheyxkdykss.com/