Archived Comparison
From the September 1991 Issue of CAR and DRIVER
We'll try to keep this discreet—your mother might find the magazine—but, just between us guys, we all know that half the fun of a fast car is standing on the pedal, pivoting those throttles wide open, and seeing the goat in the next lane back out of your peripheral vision as if he had it in reverse. Adios, hairhat.
It gets better. Can we agree that a fast car rises to its highest and best use when you take the wanker's money, too? Better yet, get his pink?
Street racing for keeps may end up in a mighty horsepower shoot-out, but it begins on a different note entirely—it begins with a con. Success relies on the art of selling a losing proposition. You look for the swaggering sort and you show just enough to get him interested—not enough to make him wary. You have to act a little dumber than he actually is.
Pickup trucks are a pretty dumb act. Dress them up however you want; anything that can haul a month's worth of horse food in one trip is still the rube from Omaha. Heh, heh.
Do you think they've heard about the Syclone down at the fern bar? How about over at the racquetball courts? Let's dare to think big. How high on the swagger ladder could you sell a losing proposition if you played the rube to full John Goodman dimensions? Uh, have they heard of the Syclone over in Maranello?
The Syclone, in case you haven't heard either, is a little black GMC pickup, hunkered down over bulging Firestones, sort of like a street punk in a muscle T-shirt. Its alloy wheels are flashy bright and its red-splash "Syclone" decals could be the latest look in lick-'em-'n'-stick-'em super-graphics. Born in the U.S.A.—in Shreveport, Louisiana, to be exact—the Syclone is your basic prairie ploughboy in Saturday-night-fever duds. One look at this piece and you expect to hear "boompa, boompa, boompa" from half-ton woofers. Talk about a ruse.
Because, under the black muscle T-shirt is—surprise!—genuine bad-ass, street-fighter muscle. This truck has specifications!—hardware that'll make fast cars cringe. It has power: 280 horsepower at 4400 rpm, from 4.3 liters of V-6, turbocharged to 14-psi boost and liquid-intercooled. It has traction: full-time four-wheel drive with a center differential and a viscous coupling that distributes 35 percent of the torque to the front wheels, 65 percent to the rears. There's also a limited-slip differential in the rear axle. Moreover, the Syclone has a transmission that makes the best marriage between the power and the traction. It's a four-speed automatic. The torque converter hastens the engine into its best-boost range, thereby minimizing turbo lag; it also prevents the smoky clutch death that's all too likely when you try to take advantage of four-wheel-drive traction to hustle off the line.
The way pickups stop is usually far more exciting than the way they go, but the Syclone has the answer for that predicament too. It has ABS brakes as standard equipment. Dog-dish size (9.5inch-diameter) drums are used at the rear—not too impressive until you notice that this vehicle, when empty, has only 37.1 percent of its weight in back. And empty is the way it'll usually be driven. Under hard braking, most of the tire loading will transfer forward, so the drums really don't have much to do back there.
The Syclone has the hardware to be about the baddest street cleaner to roll off a Detroit showroom in 1991. Yet everybody's two eyes say it's just a punk pickup truck all togged out in the latest off-the-rack fashions from Pep Boys. A scam like that should take in more green than a seat in Congress.
The deal is this. We go by two-lane blacktop rules. Money in front. From a standing start, we'll cover 1320 feet. On three. One pass. Winner takes all.
As we said earlier, racing for bucks comes down to the art of selling a losing proposition. And you want to sell big the first time because the word gets out fast.
Ferrari guys have big money. And a lot of swagger. They're used to everybody genuflecting in their presence. Would a cocky 348t owner—high on adulation and on rippah, rippah noises from his prancing-horse, mid-engine V-8—deign to put it on an uppity pickup truck?
Is the Pope a bachelor?
We'll spare you the sales script to arrange this match. What matters is the outcome. And according to electronic witnesses, here's the play-by-play.
Is the road secure? Yes. The Ferrari makes two tire burns, just to get a feel for the grip.
Waarrreeeeeee.
Waarrreeeeeee.
With just over 60 percent of its weight on its wide 255/45ZR-17 rear Bridgestones, the Italian has no problem hooking up. The driver decides he needs 4500 showing on the tach when he drops the clutch, just to keep from bogging.
The trucker, he jes smile. Don't wanta put no heat in the intercooler.
They line up.
One!
Rippah, rippah.
Two!
Riiiippaah.
The truck shudders.
It seems to clench up against the brake. A hissing, whirring, hurting tornado of a sound builds under the black hood.
Three!
Waarrreeeeeee. The Bridgestones go to blur. A gray-blue haze forms at the tread patch. The Ferrari makes a perfect launch.
When the truck brakes come off, full-boost torque is downloaded to all four wheels. They barely slip. Acceleration begins with such a jolt the driver feels his breakfast slosh rearward. In a blink, the Ferrari is looking at tailgate. And the tailgate is getting smaller. Half a car-length, one, two car-lengths of daylight between them before the Ferrari tops out of first gear. The race has just begun and already it looks like a massacre.
Levering through the Ferrari maze is always tricky, but the guy is good. No pickup truck is going to take his candy. In second gear, his singing V-8 seems to jump tempo, allegro to presto. The tailgate has stopped shrinking. But it's not looming larger, either.
Compared with the Italian, the truck is nearly soundless. But its shifting is tricky, too, because the revs rise quickly and the limiter will call a complete ceasefire at 4700 sharp (500 rpm below the redline). To squeeze out the last useful rev in the torque curve, the driver tries to shave the interrupt penalty as close as he can. He pushes the lever at 4450. The gear changes are completed barely in time.
In third, the Ferrari begins to show its breeding. It's recouping its losses. The truck is straining its burly shoulders against the wind. The air can be bulled aside, but the effort takes away from acceleration.
The end marker is coming up. The slippery, wind-cheating Ferrari is into its element now, gobbling up the gap. Can it break through in the final kick? Its four-cam, 32-valve, all-aluminum V-8 engine, the pride of Maranello, screams with the pain of effort.
No! The truck wins.
Get ready for the loser's weasel.
"One more time, half a mile this time around."
"Nope."
"Okay, same distance, but start from a roll this time."
"Nope."
The savvy racer knows his game, and he sticks to it.
