The dyno score was split between peak horsepower and torque delivery. The first is simple enough; it's the biggest number. The second is more complicated: Imagine each car has a gear that tops out at 100 mph, then add up all the torque available to accelerate the vehicle from 40 mph to 100 mph in that gear. The area under that curve was scored for power delivery. Most cars make more torque at redline than at 40% of redline, so it is an advantage to be able to spin faster. In the real world, being able to keep accelerating for a longer time before shifting makes a car faster.
As with the 1.8Ts and S4s, the car that had the most attention paid to its flow paths breathed freely on the top end, added a bundle of extra revs and posted a torque delivery figure out of proportion to its peak power. Protomotive's hybrid-turbo monster had area under the curve 15% greater than the highest peak-horsepower car, the Evolution Motorsports Stage 4, and 11% greater than the nearest competitor, By Design. Of 25 points available on the dyno, the 551-hp Protomotive car collected 24.107. Second place went to the 564-hp Evo Stage 4 car, with 20.053 points. Displacement ups the ante; the best torque delivery figure from the S4 Shootout, posted by AWE's Silver Bullet, was superior only to that of the least powerful car in this 996 shootout, Axis Sport Tuning's yellow machine.
Bringing this car as it was may be seen as a bit of miscalculation on Axis' part, but the company has a record in magazine shootouts. Axis has won Sport Compact Car's Ultimate Street Car Challenge twice in three tries, once with a completely stock F360 Modena, and just a few months before this Twin Turbo shootout with a supercharged 350Z, which was also the least powerful car in that contest. This shootout didn't include all the "reality check" categories of USCC-we were here to find the baddest-assed, mo-fo'inest Porsche Turbo in the land. No dandies needed apply.
Road Course
Day two started as a typical cold, foggy December morning where Highway 58 crosses Interstate 5, with competitors finding warmth, plastic-frosted donuts and almost-drinkable coffee in the lobby of the Super 8 Motel. The breakfast of motorheads. Ten minutes north, they rolled into the pits, Buddy Gainey's PES Stage 5 and Evolution Motorsport's Todd Zuccone both on space saver spares from running over debris. Nobody objected to shuffling the run orders so By Design could lend Buddy one of its front wheels for the tests, a truly classy move. We ran the road course first, then braking, so that any driveline carnage resulting from repeated dragstrip launches wouldn't prevent a car from posting scores in other events.
Cort Wagner took out By Design's Cabrio first. There had been no time to bed the brakes, and they faded after four hot laps. Cort came in, shaking his head and saying, "You wouldn't believe how over-motored these cars are." I pointed out that the $17,000 PCCB brakes were actually on fire and told him to take another cool-down lap. Still, the car was good enough for second place, with a best time of 67.08 sec.
The Protomotive car's 67.23 sec. was good only for fourth, but Cort kept saying things like, "This thing's bitchin'; there's another 2 seconds in that car out here; the engine's almost too explosive."
Then he admitted to not really being able to use full throttle without spinning the tires and going sideways.