Associate Editor Jesse Kiser grabs the keys to Mickey Thompson Tires SEMA car On this episode of HOT ROD Unlimited. Its a 2013 5.0L Mustang topped with an Edelbrock supercharger and it puts 575hp to the wheels. He headed down to the American Street Car Series event: Run to the Coast. This is the first event for of the season and features a speed-stop challenge
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00:00 Hey, it's Jesse Kaiser here, associate editor with Hot Rod Magazine, and today we're at Cars & Coffee in Irvine, California.
00:06 We're gonna head down to the American Streetcar Series Run to the Coast event. Mickey Thompson lent us their Street Comp Mustang,
00:11 and we're gonna try to compete.
00:13 So Cars & Coffee has become this kind of world-famous cruise-in on Saturday mornings in Orange County, California.
00:27 Everything from muscle cars to exotics to late models to race cars showed up,
00:32 but today this is our starting point for the event Run to the Coast.
00:35 Mickey Thompson Tire threw us the keys to their 2013 Mustang.
00:38 This was a SEMA car that they built to look good on a showroom floor. We're gonna see how it performs on the track.
00:43 It's got their enhanced stance system on it, which is basically wheels, tires, and a lowering kit.
00:48 It's got their Street Comp's five-spoke wheels,
00:50 which are designed for late model muscle cars, as well as their Street Comp tires. All of the suspension work is pure prototype.
00:57 This is the first time Mickey Thompson has built any of this. The Mustang is powered by the 5-liter Coyote motor.
01:02 It's topped with the Edelbrock supercharger that Edelbrock installed and tuned themselves.
01:06 It laid down 575 horsepower on our dyno at West Tech in Mira Loma, California.
01:11 The American Streetcar Series is a series of events that we do across the country.
01:24 The first one in the year, every year, is always Run to the Coast, the event that we're doing now.
01:28 We'll have a speed stop challenge all across and road course.
01:31 The main thing is we want to get people out of the lounge chairs, throw away the wax, and get out here and run these cars.
01:37 First up for us was the speed stop challenge, which is a straight half-mile distance.
01:42 You have to accelerate as fast as you can, stop, turn around, and on the way back do a slalom,
01:48 and then stop within a box. Hit any cones and you're deducted.
01:51 Don't stop within the box and the run doesn't count.
01:54 They're getting better and worse and I'm learning.
01:56 I went way off, made the track a little bit longer than it was supposed to be the last time,
01:59 but I think I'm getting better.
02:01 The speed stop challenge was not nearly as simple as you'd think.
02:04 It was a lot of figuring out how the car itself was going to react to the challenge.
02:08 For instance, we were spinning off the line and the distance for the first leg was not perfect for our gear ratio.
02:13 [car engine revving]
02:15 Our best after several runs was 22.96 seconds.
02:32 So after the speed stop challenge, we placed about 40th in the field out of about 90 cars.
02:37 That's pretty good, but I still think this car has more potential than that.
02:41 I think it'll really shine in our next event, the autocross.
02:43 So the autocross is like a miniature road course set up with cones and a large asphalt area.
02:59 If you hit any cones on the course, you're deducted time.
03:02 This course took a little bit of getting used to.
03:05 I could realize where I could go faster in some corners and where I needed to slow down in other corners.
03:10 [car engine revving]
03:12 A lot of the performance of the car has to do with the tires.
03:19 This was the reason the car was built, to showcase the Mickey Thompson Street Comp tires.
03:23 They're 20x9s in the front and 20x10.5s in the rear.
03:26 The front tires are 255/35 R20s and the rears are 275/35 R20s.
03:32 They're perfect for the autocross racing.
03:34 When the tires got warm, they stuck to the ground and kept the car planted.
03:38 After several runs, I clocked in my best time at 32.963 seconds.
03:42 That ranked us 33rd out of 90 cars.
03:45 I'm pretty happy with that number so far.
03:47 So, right now I'm riding around, cooling the brakes off a little bit.
03:53 This thing really performs.
03:55 It's not just, "Oh, let's throw a blower on it and say we have a blower and fabricate some number."
04:00 No, we took it to our dyno, it laid down 575 horsepower to the wheels, and it is reliable.
04:07 This is the hardest driving this car has seen since it's been built.
04:11 And I'm really blown away by how it has not acted up, it's not done anything funny.
04:17 Any punch I've given it, it's punched right back. It's just been phenomenal.
04:21 So far, there's a lot of badass cars out there right now.
04:27 And the two fastest ones that are in my group are the No Limit Red C10...
04:34 ...and the Meijer Racing Blue Mustang.
04:37 A lot of cool cars out here today.
04:40 The road course is about 2.1 miles in length.
04:48 I'm really excited about it because here's where we can use the horsepower of the car.
04:51 The road course is totally different from the autocross, not just in distance, but on how you drive the car.
04:56 You have more time and more space to set up the car for the corners.
05:01 This car is a street car, it's not made to race like this, so the suspension settings are a little bit soft.
05:06 This is where the full potential of the car came into play.
05:09 I could play around how the car was set up and how the car reacted going into the corners.
05:14 The drastic pavement changes on the road course were also another factor I had to overcome.
05:18 Luckily, the tires kept me planted.
05:20 The stability control on the Mustang also kept me from burying this thing into a ditch.
05:24 The power really came into play on the backstretch.
05:26 The longest stretch of track we were doing was about 110 mph with a slight corner.
05:31 I had to push myself harder and harder to try to make that corner as fast as possible.
05:35 Again, we started hot lapping the Mustang.
05:40 It couldn't drag me out of the driver's seat.
05:42 The SSBC brakes have street pads, so it couldn't withstand the high temperature of hot lapping over and over again.
05:47 The brakes started to fade and my time started to fall off.
05:50 We laid down the best time, 2 minutes flat.
05:52 That places us 29th out of 90 cars.
05:55 I'm pretty happy with that considering how many cars out here are built specifically for events like this.
06:00 I love this Mickey Thompson Mustang.
06:04 It's got all kinds of power and it hooks up every time.
06:07 This car is not made to race like this.
06:09 It's a street car. It's built for SEMA.
06:11 It's exceeding all of our expectations to begin with.
06:13 We took a 600 horsepower car and did this event.
06:16 You can do this in any kind of car you want.
06:19 It's not club racing, it's not on a professional road course, and it doesn't cost the same.
06:24 We fell in love after doing this and we'll be back again.
06:27 [Music]
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