Castrol Top Shop Challenge
Seven tuners with seven engines, but there can only be one winner!
It's been a long time since we had a competition involving our family of magazines. As you may know, Eurotuner is part of a larger group of publications that focus on import and domestic cars. For '08, we're proud to be part of the Castrol Top Shop Challenge, a new contest involving seven magazines from our group to prove which tuners can build the best engine.
The idea behind the competition is engine building. Each magazine gets to select one tuner to squeeze as much horsepower from its chosen engine. There are four criteria that will determine the winner, and the winning engine will be given away to a lucky reader at the '08 SEMA show.
For the remainder of '08, stay tuned to Eurotuner for exclusive updates on our Euro contender. To find out how to enter to win the Top Shop motor, visit www.syntectopshop.com for details.
Euro Player
Being the only European automotive magazine involved in the Castrol Top Shop Challenge, we're inevitably underdogs but feel confident we can win the title - Euros are better than Japanese and domestic cars anyway!
With so many impressive Euro tuners across the nation, it was difficult to narrow down the field on one that would represent the Euro tuning industry. After consideration, top-candidate 034Motorsport from Fremont, CA accepted the challenge.
034 has competed in the past two eurotuner GP events and successfully won the fastest AWD lap time in '07, as well as the dyno and drag competitions in '06. With their experience of building and racing fast Audis, we're confident they'll be able to engineer a motor capable of winning this challenge.
The engine is the 7A 2.3 liter 20v five-cylinder quattro motor from 034's '88 Audi 80. It was chosen because it's already developed a dyno-proven 680hp to the crank, as seen in etGP '06. Since then, 034 continued development and improved power to 714whp in '07.
For this challenge, 034 sourced an identical, stock motor and will build it to achieve even higher horsepower. On the current project, the motor is bored out to 83mm and stroked to 86.4mm to give 2324cc. It uses a GT40R turbo and 034 optimized the head, block, headers, fuel management, throttle body and other components to achieve maximum power. For the Top Shop Challenge, we expect to see an even larger turbo and more internal work.
The Competition
Since it's vital to know your enemy, we thought you'd like to know Super Street magazine chose Bisimoto from Chino, CA. With Hondas in its blood, the tuner has sourced a non-VTEC F22 2.2 16v motor commonly found in an Accord.
Opting for something more modern is Sport Compact Car mag, which chose Cosworth as their tuner; this hardly seems fair, but it'll be trying to squeeze as much power from a 3.5 liter Nissan VQ35DE motor. The motor was sourced from either a Nissan 350Z or Infiniti G35.
Our cousins from Modified magazine in Canada chose AMS from Chicago, IL to tune a Mitsubishi 4G63 2.0 liter engine, commonly found in the second-generation Eclipse.
Turbo magazine recruited SP Engineering from City of Industry, CA to help it build a Toyota 2JZ-GTE engine. The twin-turbo 3.0 is popular among Supra owners since it came factory-tuned with 310hp.
The boys at Import Tuner mag are going to see if the older Nissan SR20DET motor can win. Most commonly found in the 240SX, G Dimensions from City of Industry, CA is in charge of the project.
Finally, Lowrider will represent the domestic market with the help of Ace Machine from Riverside, CA and a seven liter General Motors ZZ427 engine.
Check back next month for the first stage of 034Motorsport's engine build and to see how the other competitors are faring.
