Thread 2:
HERE IS PETER’S E-MAIL TO HIS COUPE GROUP:
Hi Everyone. I guess you’ve all heard that I got run over by an errant 1600-class open wheel desert racer a few weeks ago in Laughlin NV. It happened so fast it’s almost incomprehensible to understand what occurred. Bottom line is that it could have been much worse, so I feel extremely fortunate to have survived. Total rehab will take some time but I expect to be back working on 73 within a month or so.
NOW…to the real point of this letter. I’m sure that by now you all are aware that Aaron Robinson wrote a less than wonderful report on Ron Weingart’s 51 in the March issue of Car and Driver magazine. This was supposed to be a six car comparison with some of the hottest cars on the road. What it turned out to be was a three car comparison of three real production cars and a passing glance at three other “interesting” component built cars, but probably not a really fair comparison, as one (Aerial Atom) couldn’t even run on the street! The other two, Ron’s 51 and a Noble 400 WERE certainly worthy of comparison with the Corvette Z06, Lotus Exige “S” and Porsche GT3, but were not run head to head in the magazine’s subjective “Final Results” comparison charts on page 48 for reasons the editors thought appropriate. Ron’s coupe, if compared in the same manner against the other component cars by all the reviewers in a subjective ratings test, would have won hands down against the other component cars. All the real performance test data is there on pages 46-47 if you choose to extract it on your own and Ron’s Superformance Coupe did incredibly well….in spite of being down some 80 horsepower! A fact we were NOT aware of until we called Roush with the performance numbers (that evening after the tests) to ask why Ron’s engine was laying down on us. It was only then that Roush’s tech admitted that Ron’s eight stack injected 427 was down 80 BHP because the fine screens installed at the base of Ron’s injectors were limiting airflow! Prior to this point Ron had sent the screens back to Roush for evaluation and had been told there was no detectable difference in flow! What evidently wasn’t said was just how the screens had been tested. Not on a running engine but on a flow bench at nominal flow rates, which were fine for normal street cruising but not at wide open throttle. Roush later did get around to actually testing Ron’s screens on a running engine, discovered the loss in power, but some how “forgot” to call Ron and tell him. This little communication faux pas really cost us (and Superformance and Roush especially) some serious prestige points because we would have wiped the “competition” off the charts had the engine been delivering the power we had expected. As it was the coupe’s CHASSIS did extraordinarily well, setting the highest mark of ALL SIX supercars in the SKID PAD test pulling 1.12 Gs. Yes, we were equipped with Kumho V710 tires, but EVERY other car in the test, was also equipped with some sort of DOT street legal super sticky rubber, so it was an even test.
This was a very extensive test with six writers from the magazine each doing evaluative tests on every car for each of the three days, performance, road travel and track test. Each car was equipped with a log, so that as each day’s tests were broken down into segments (so each writer when switching cars could put his notes in the log). At the end of the three days each writer was assigned to write about one of the cars (the column that appeared with each car in the story). Aaron was assigned to Ron’s coupe and rather than look through the voluminous notes of praise from the other five editors just focused on the point that we’d had a problem with the engine in Ron’s coupe in the waning hours of the last day and wrote about that. Cheap shot.
The problem with Ron’s engine didn’t become apparent until the last day in the late afternoon when they needed some last minute photography in the better afternoon light. The engine began making a strange sound on one of these photo laps (at relatively slow speeds). We pulled the car into the pits, listened, but no one could discern what the strange sound might be. I pulled the valve covers to check all the rockers and pushrods… all ok. I also pulled the plugs to check for color and check for compression… all ok. Rather than risk damaging the engine further I decided to flat bed the car back to Ron’s house and that’s what we did. Ron was leaving on a trip within hours of the car arriving home so there was no time to do any further inspection. Upon return he checked with Roush and they offered to pick up the car and ship it back to Olthoff’s in NC, who would do a preliminary inspection, then pull the engine so it could be sent up to Roush’s in Livonia for a full autopsy. Dennis Olthoff was of the opinion that the engine had starved for
oil, probably during the skid pad tests. Possibly so, but then why did the engine run hundreds of miles with no sign of problems during the next couple of days? Could something have occurred during the track tests? Maybe, but the course was such that
oil starvation shouldn’t have been a problem. What happened? To date there’s been no report back from Roush…only that they are standing behind the engine and will return it to Ron in normal condition. You can’t fault Roush for not standing behind their product.
What I have a problem with is the coverage in Car and Driver. Bottom line….. we didn’t deliver a car that made the full three days, so it was given a less than favorable write up. That often happens with the media. You always take chances in doing these tests. However… had the writer taken just a few moments to review their own performance data and critiques from the other editors, he might have seen that the Coupe was a jewel among some of the finest high performance cars of the day. It handled better, performed reasonably well in spite of the lack of power and was a far more practical and comfortable road car than half the other cars tested. The Z06 Corvette was deemed the best overall performing car, yet it posted the lowest skid pad numbers! It’s quarter mile time of 122 in 11.8 seconds was impressive, especially when measured against the so called smaller engined “track cars”, the Lotus and Aerial Atom, but any well tuned, 427 powered, Superformance Coupe should run 128 in the low 11s , which would have put it at the top of the performance charts. Had we had that extra 80 horsepower would we have been voted “Best”? It seems not. Even with Ron’s engine running poorly his coupe was only a tenth off the Corvette’s best 0-60, 0-100 and quarter mile times. Then look at the 30-50 and 50-70 times….we STILL smoked the Z06!
I ask that you look at Car and Driver’s own performance numbers below and question what happened to their “fair appraisal”. I’ve included Ron’s analysis of these numbers to make it easier to understand.
HERE ARE SOME COUPE/Z06 COMPARISON NUMBERS FROM THE MATRICES - EVEN DOWN 80 HP:
COUPE Z06
0-60 3.7 3.6
0-100 8.4 8.3
1/4 MIL 11.9 @ 119 11.8 @ 122
ROLLING 5-60 4.2 4.3
TOP GEAR 30-50 4.7 11.0 WE STILL BEAT EVERYBODY HERE
TOP GEAR 50-70 4.1 9.8 WE STILL BEAT EVERYBODY HERE
BUTTONWILLOW
LAP TIME/MPH 2:02.70/79.2 2:01.00/80.3
BUT HERE'S WHAT I DON'T UNDERSTAND:
ENTRY/AVE/EXIT SPEEDS
SECTOR 1 60.5/58.1/72.7 59.0/58.2/71.1 COUPE ENTERS FASTER & EXITS FASTER BUT HAS A SLOWER AVERAGE SPEED
SECTOR 2 90.4/83.7/86.4 88.0/85.1/87.0 GO FIGURE
SECTOR 3 108.4/66.0/89.9 104.6/69.4/89.1 AGAIN COUPE ENTERS FASTER & EXITS FASTER BUT HAS A SLOWER AVERAGE SPEED ESPECIALLY SINCE THE COUPE OUT ACCELERATES THE Z06 IN GEAR
DON'T FORGET THAT MY ENGINE WAS ALREADY DAMAGED AT THIS POINT AS WELL AS BEING DOWN 80 HP TO START WITH. IMAGINE WHAT SHE WOULD HAVE BEEN LIKE HAD SHE BEEN PREPARED LIKE THE OTHER CARS AND THE K & N FILTERS ON INSTEAD OF THE SCREENS! Ron
I’d ask that each of you take a moment to write to the editors of Car and Driver and ask them to review their own numbers and question what was written. Peter Brock
Here is the address to use if you choose:
editors@caranddriver.com