Having just made the monumental decision of buying a car that is both a
street car and a national-caliber autocross car, let me tell you why I
did what I did.
I thought long and hard about the Civic Si....even took one home for the
evening. My reaction is that it is an awesome street car. Really fast
on the open road and from stop sign to stop sign. And it handles great
on the street. But it has 2 problems for an autocrosser. 1) The engine
is really peaky with the torque peak of 111 lb/ft at 7000 rpm (that is
really high). That is hard to deal with on the autocross course (and
for me takes some of the fun out of it with all the shifting and high
rpms). 2) The car cannot legally get good camber in the front (better
not do it illegally because I will know it :) ). It does have a bit
more camber than the EX, but that is only due to slighly reduced ride
height in front. In my book, these 2 things made me decide not to buy
it (even though I really wanted it).
What I decided to buy is a 94 Celica GT. The Celica GT has 15x7 stock
rims (compared to the Civic Si's 15x6) so the Celica can run a big
tire. Also, the Celica allows over 2 degrees negative front camber for
those big tires. As for the engine, the Celica GT has the 2.2 liter
that has lots of torque (something like 130 at 4500 rpm) in a broad
area.
I may eat my decision to not buy the Civic (in a big way) if I get beat
by one.......
buuuuuuuuut, I don't think that will happen unless I just suck as a
driver (lol).
Chris
94 Celica GT bought 2 weeks ago.
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