Tweet
We get to do some pretty cool things here at Meguiar's, and that includes sponsoring the Auto Week Magazine Fantasy Camp for the second year in a row. The fine folks at AW put on one heck of a show, and for the subscribers who pay to participate in the event, it's like being a kid at Disneyland. The premise of this event is for participants to be a road test editor for a day, comparing 10 cars head to head on a closed course under a variety of circumstances, then write about it on Auto Week's website. To say they had a blast is an understatement - wouldn't you have fun if you got to drive cars like the Dodge Challenger SRT8 392, Ford Mustang Boss 302, BMW 335i, Infinity G37 IPL and other sports coupes on a closed track? Oh, and they got to hang out with Chip Foose for the weekend, too.
Things kicked off with a dinner and a chance to review the interiors of the cars on Friday evening.
Featherlite Coach provided the transportation from the hotel to the Ford test facility. Talk about traveling in luxury!
Saturday morning brought rain, and a wet track. But the rain soon abated, the track dried out, and the fun began.
Orientation for the campers started with AW Road Test Editor Natalie Neff introducing everyone to Kevin Markham, Ford Test Driver and the head honcho for the day.
AW is also putting together a new TV show set to premier in early 2012 so they had cameras on hand to shoot this event. That meant the campers were interviewed regularly during the day, starting off with a quick group session.
Orientation done, it's time to do what these came here for - drive!
From the main portion of the track where acceleration and brake testing were performed, the campers then pulled onto the twisty and hilly handling course. The car you see in the distance with the headlights on would have just completed a 70-0 full ABS braking test. The guys were told to basically "try to break the pedal off" when hitting the brakes.
After the first round, it's interview time. These guys not only get to know how it feels to be a road test editor, but a bit of a celeb at the same time.
Driver swap!
Home base for the morning.
After lunch it was off to the far side of the facility and three smaller track encounters - a wet auto cross, a dry tight auto cross and a dry high speed auto cross. Here the BMW 335i sets out on the wet track. The Challenger SRT8 was often seen exiting the slalom on the far side of the course tail first!
The Boss 302 under heavy braking at the end of the dry tight auto-x course.
At the end of the day the Ford Test Drivers took the guys out for some hot laps on the handling course. The tight turns and sharp hills meant that several cars actually took flight - the driver of the Challenger SRT8 and Boss 302 Mustangs were especially adept at getting their cars to launch! Helmets were required for this exercise.
Hey, hanging out with Chip Foose all day was a blast! He's got great stories to tell about Overhaulin', building Ridler Award winning cars, and the first truck he had with 11 gallons of lacquer paint on it and the bottle of M07 Show Car Glaze he kept behind the seats and applied almost constantly.
We have even more images on our Twitter feed as we were Tweeting throughout the day.
There are plans for another Fantasy Camp next year - if you can get into it, we highly recommend it!!
You can find out more about this event at www.autoweek.com/fantasycamp
Comment