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Optima Ultimate Street Cars

If youve seen the term Optima Ultimate Street Car and wondered what it means, take heart. As insiders, we sometimes forget specialized lingo has a way of excluding a lot of well-meaning people from the discussion. Its been more than 11 years since we told you about an idea HOT ROD magazine had here called the Ultimate Street Car Invitational that has since exploded in popularity. The premise: bring the countrys most potent muscle car performers together at the same track to find out which car and driver is best. An Optima Ultimate Street Car, however, is way more than a strict horsepower challenge. If that were the case, a simple drag race might suffice. The finale competition itselfcalled the Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitationalis the pinnacle event of the series, and the first thing youll notice is that cars compete by invitation only. If Optima Ultimate Street Car seems like a confusing bluster of words, and adding the word invitational makes you think your own car may be somehow inferior to those being invited, please dont think that! Related Story: What I s a Restomod? HOT RODs Steven Rupp won the first Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitational in 2008 with his 1968 Chevy Camaro. If youve heard about the Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitational but were confused about it or thought it wasnt for you, we want to bring you up to speed on what it is, how Optima picks cars, and where they do the business of evaluation. But first some background on how the Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitation came about. Batteries Are Boring As a coincidence, your author sold car batteries for a living. That firsthand experience trying to sell people stuff they didnt want and couldnt afford but needed really bad taught me what the Optima company was up against when the Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitational was first instigated. When batteries fail, nobody wants to hear, If your battery was designed better and built stronger, it would still be alive. Its a fact: If you find yourself staring at a battery, its likely you (or someone you know) is having a bad day. Even worse, on the best day, a car battery is merely boring. In 2008, Optima Batteries was looking for a way to promote the robust construction and superior performance of its absorbed glass matt (AGM) spiral-cell batteries. For reasons just stated, they wanted the customer battery experience (for once) to be a positive one. How can you do that ? Battery makers, after all, seemed doomed to a public life of failure. It turns out, you can have a hell of a lot of fun racing cars with indestructible batteries, but it involved a leap of marketing faith. Would it be enough fun for folks to associate buying a batterya task akin to getting a root canalwith something that was actually fun? The world would soon find out. In November 2008, the first Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitational happened (as it has at the Las Vegas SEMA show every year since then) and was a modest successenough, it turns out, that it warranted a yearly series. What I s an Optima Ultimate Street Car? While HOT RODs initial 2008 foray into Ultimate Street Car competition was initially for all domestic performance cars, the primary motivation was to attract classic muscle cars that had been modified for better handling and braking. You know these as restomods or pro touring machinesolder cars with performance purported to be equal to or better than late-model cars like the Corvette, Camaro, Mustang, Challenger, and Viper. Late-model performers were also invited to see exactly how far the modified classic muscle cars had come. The only problem with the pro touring muscle car movement at the time was that people were building them, winning car show trophies, and that was the end of it. You just had to believe that rich guy who Facebooked his little story about dusting a new Lambo with a 1970 Camaro. (No doubt the origination of the saying Video, or it didnt happen.) Optima Batteries now had an event to extract the truth, but it had to be a fair fight. Optima reasoned, why shouldnt they be the judge of whats fair? The Invitational Leveling the playing field is the job of Optimas competition department, which carefully chooses hopeful entries based on a combination of performance equipment, previous performance benchmarks, ingenuity, car variety, and street-worthinessthings that arent always in alignment with each other. Also, the Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitational has expanded its original mission beyond domestic performance machines to include imports and trucks. These may not be necessarily in the wheelhouse of HOT ROD, but they sure are for Optima, and today all types and vintages are welcome to apply for inclusion in the Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitational by participating in one of the run-up events you can find at DriveUSCA.com . While you might assume an invitation to the Ultimate Street Car Invitational is hard to getand it isits not always the case that the fastest, most expensive cars with the best drivers get all the invites. Not even close. Optima looks for real street cars and often chooses those that are more realistic or interesting for the average enthusiast. Thinly disguised race cars are frowned upon, and professional wringers for drivers are discouraged. This keeps things realistic and approachable year after year for the typical enthusiast, a goal weve always been supportive of since day one. That said, a solid performance at one of Optimas DriveUSCA events is practically a requirement to get an invite to Las Vegas in the fall. (A few invitational cars are chosen each year at SEMA from cars displayed at the trade show.) Optima Ultimate Street Car Evaluation Crowning the king of street cars isnt as simple as putting cars on track and letting them eat. The task is broken down into three basic contests: high-speed road course handling, a highly technical short-course autocross, and a judged engineering/aesthetic overview. Naturally, Optima further subdivides and parses out sponsorships and naming rights to all portions of the invitational as well as all the search events leading up to Las Vegas, but dont let that confuse youjust know that even though you may have less experience in one area (say, the high-speed road course), you can make up points for engineering acuity, creative use of components, self-imposed budget constraints, and usability on the street. Lets take a look at some of the cars on track to compete in this years Optima Street Car Invitational. 2021 Optima Ultimate Street Car Competitors John McKissack's '66 Fairlane (front of pack) has been the most consistent vintage Ford in the series, improving every season from 15th in 2018 to 9th place in 2020. Can he make another leap to the top of the standings in 2021? Brian Hobaugh won the OUSCI title in his '65 Corvette in 2013, but that car hasn't seen much track time since it became famous in the Fast & Furious movie franchise. Hobaugh's '73 Camaro finished second to Chris Smith's second-gen F-body in 2019, although the two never competed head to head until the invitational, where Hobaugh came away with a decisive win. Chad Ryker's '68 Camaro has finished in the top five in points every full season he's run since 2016, including third last season. As an established series, the Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitational has become very hard for new entries to be competitive in their rookie season. Jason Bottenfield knew this and wisely sent his '69 Camaro to DuSold Designs, which has had a hand in the last three Optima champions. Bottenfield was rewarded with a search event class win at NCM Motorsports Park last season, en route to an incredible fourth-place finish in points. Jim Stehlin's '73 Camaro has finished in the top 10 in points in each of the last five seasons. As a seasoned competitor, he knows those who stand still will fall behind, and he's always upgrading his car and looking to improve his skills behind the wheel. Series rules significantly penalize specific areas on cars that are often changed when cars get converted to track rats, including non-functional headlights, horns, and lexan windshields. John Woods '70 Firebird has been a longtime competitor in the series but was constantly dogged in points by his lexan windshield. He changed to factory glass in 2020 and leapt right into the top 10 in points. Vintage Mopars have long struggled in the Optima Ultimate Street Car series, but maybe thats only because no one has brought the right car to the show. Robert Ellsworth is building a Hellcat-powered '70 Challenger that may change that trend. Built on a modern Viper chassis, this new entry could be a contender in 2021. Robert Britton took the 2020 season off (as did most of the world), but look for his stunning Mustang to turn heads and wow competition department judges in 2021. With CB Ramey's Corvette headed to the Holley EFI GTL Class, Chris Smith's '70 Camaro, which won GTV in 2019, once again becomes the car to beat. Tom Kamman saw the path CB Ramey's C4 Corvette blazed to a Class Championship in 2020 and will be running a C4 of his own design. The post Optima Ultimate Street Cars appeared first on Hot Rod Network .

http://www.hotrod.com/articles/optima-ultimate-street-cars/

 

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