As most of you may or may not know we belong to the major publishing company, Primedia. There are several car magazines here that get together on a driving trip from Irvine, California's Mazda dealership to the Mobile One Import Challenge held at the Houston Texas International Motor Speedway on March 8th and 9th. Yes, we are talking about drag racing and car shows and maybe even a few cool audio systems in a some really hot cars.
Our marketing staff lured Casey and me into making this trip by telling us we would get to drive some nice cars. I got a 2001 Mazda Protg MP3 edition and Casey got the HKS turbo equipped Mazda Miata. Yea, he got the faster car, but I am totally into the MP3's handling capabilities and rally looks. The MP3 version of the Protg is one of the coolest programs an automotive manufacturer has delivered to the dealership floor under $20k. With the MP3 name you get aftermarket, name brand audio and performance products from the factory. The joint venture is with Kenwood who supplies an aftermarket head unit with a four-speaker system and is enhanced nicely with a 100-watt 12" subwoofer. The motor is stock with only a Racing Beat cat back exhaust added for a few more horsepower, but the magic is the Racing Beat springs and sway bar combination mated with the Tokico struts for a solid yet comfortable ride.
Konig supplied some 17" lightweight rims mounted to Falken 205/40/17 tires. I know we were going to be on the road continuous for nine days so I added a Cellport Systems voice activated hands-free system that allows me to plug in my cell phone and still play desk jockey behind the wheel. This system is easy to use and works great when my Cingular National cell service plan actually worked. It worked like normal mostly around the larger cities but it was those in-between areas on the open road that had the most problems. However, our Audiovox 2-way radio systems eliminated the problem of inter-car communication.
The other area of pre-trek attention was changing the oil. When I got the car at 11,000 miles, the oil and filter had yet to be changed. So it was off to my buddy's shop (twinsturbo.com) for a late night service session before we added another mile to the odometer. I tend to take care of cars even under abusive conditions and oil service is the number one area of preventative maintenance. I have been studying synthetic oils for a few years now and have been using these types of oils in various vehicles. A few years ago I was introduced to Neo Oils. This is the number one choice for F1 teams so it's plenty good for me!
The following pages are a photo essay of our trip. While we were on this trip we stopped by two other Mazda dealerships, one in Arizona and the other in Texas. We went go-kart racing with the Direct Hits guys in Albuquerque, New Mexico and stopped by Cadillac Ranch (www.libertysoftware.be/cml/cadillacranch/ crmain.htm) to pay our respects to automotive art. We visited the new facility of Nitrous Express in Texas as well.
While in Texas at the WIC race event, on Saturday night we attended the Import Revolution car show and met up with several audio manufacturers such as MTX, Alphasonic, Audiobahn as well as shops such as Car Toys and Tweeter etc. where Ainslie Fukuda (Mark Fukuda's younger brother) was showing off his Passat with an awesome installation. With a family name like that, what do you expect?
There were a couple of other hot audio systems we missed at the show, but not to worry, Houston's cruzing scene is the best I've seen! Yes, better than anything we have ever had in California, except for Palm Springs back in the mini-truck days. Joel Pickell of Spyder Racing Development (877.454.RACE) is the man in the know on the street scene, "MC of the streets"; that is, Master of Connections. He was a great tour guide for the night, if you will.