As the kid pulled into the pits, he spotted his rival, an older gent with weathered features and white hair, sitting back in a chair biding his time. The young buck slouched down a little lower in his black bucket, peered through the mail slots of his chopped coupe, giving his mill a little jab-the blower whining with glee-and brought his mount to rest next to the crowd. The man with white hair slowly pulled himself up out of his chair and sauntered a few feet to his own steed, a glistening candy-colored dream machine bedecked with all the hardcore hardware one could imagine. He smiled a knowing smile, one that comes from years of experience and decades of hard-fought victories. The kid responded with a grin of his own, knowing full well that low weight and high horsepower will win every time, and slowly leaned back against his brutally basic car, waiting. It was high noon in Fontana, and the battle was about to begin.
Okay, so now that the stage is set and we've got all of you out in reader-land perched on the edge of your seats, it's time to fill in a little background. Not too long ago, the powers-that-be here at Primedia decided it would be a great idea to start a testing program, which basically involves renting track time at the California Speedway in Fontana, training a staffer in the fine art of automobile "testing," and supplying us with all the fancy hardware necessary to measure performance stats like quarter-mile and 0-60-mph acceleration, skid pad and slalom course handling, and even 60-0 braking times. Of course, our ever-so-serious bosses thought that this would be a great way to get more information on feature cars, test ongoing project cars, and even make parts manufacturers put their money where their mouths are by actually putting speed gear to the test. However, here at R&C we're sort of like the court jesters of the Primedia empire, always looking to have a good time without all the emphasis on hard data and cutting-edge performance. If our ass-o-meters tell us that a car is fast, then it probably is. That's usually good enough for us.
Not too long ago, yours truly was leafing through some old issues of R&C, when a few different famous stories popped up. The first (September '73) was called The "ROD & CUSTOM Tire Test," in which former editor Bud Bryan and a gaggle of staff members journeyed out to the old Ontario Motor Speedway with a highboy roadster, a truckload of tires, and the sole intention of flogging the whee out of every set of donuts they could find. The idea was to test new (for the time) performance radial and bias-ply tires versus the tried-and-true rubber of years past. However, the story eventually evolved into an excuse for the guys to go play at the racetrack instead of being stuck behind a desk back at the office. It became one of the magazine's most popular stories of all time, and we've always admired our forebears' dedication to the art of slacking off and having fun at the track. The other story we ran across that looked like fun was a piece our Ol' Dad, Gray Baskerville, came up with about 30 years ago with the help of his buddy Jerry Kugel. Called "Duel of the Deuces," the story (August '72) featured B-Ville and Kugel thrashing their roadsters side-by-side on the street, the road course, and the dragstrip in an effort to determine which was better: high tech or old school. Who won the duel? The readers did, because they got to be a part of the fun.