"Today, we have street machines that sport all the visual cues to performance with real blowers, nitrous oxide, lumpy cams, and big-tube headers, but some of these street pretenders have never seen the inside of a dragstrip, let alone a slalom course." That was our own Jeff Smith 19 years ago announcing his editorial brainchild: Car Craft's Real Street Eliminator competition. It was an encouragement of street machines being multipurpose go/whoa/cornering/daily driveable machines, and in the event's subsequent years of editorial coverage, RSE inspired legions of car guys. Staffer Terry McGean was just one of many readers who grew from teenager to working professional looking forward to the nearly annual shootout of all-around-capable cars that dictated the brand of street machine they themselves strove to build. It had a near cult following.
Meanwhile, the RSE event itself came and went under different editorships. The last time I was editor, I killed it. As a subscriber I'd always appreciated RSE, mostly because it had photos of cars making tire smoke and breaking stuff rather than sitting in the field at the edge of the fairgrounds. But once I became a magazine insider, it was obvious that the staff would struggle to even find competitors, and in the early '90s, I as a reader could not have been more bored by the RSE fields loaded with nearly new Buick Grand Nationals and 5.0 Mustangs. Finally, during my first term as editor, I had an idea: rather than hand-picking the entrants, we announced an open call for potential competitors. After months of promotion, we had seven entries: a T-bucket, a Lamborghini, and a handful of late-model Corvettes. It didn't scream Car Craft. Then I noticed that newsstand sales had tanked for the past three or four Real Street Eliminator issues. I looked around at open-track days and found zero musclecars. I browsed our stack of readers' rides photos and found virtually no cars that looked like they could corner without dragging the door handles. Evidence pointed to the fact that the mainstream musclecar audience didn't care about cornering or braking. I called off Real Street Eliminator.
But now perhaps its time has come. The RSE-type car has a name now-Pro Touring-and after nearly 20 years of magazines bludgeoning readers with the concept, modern hot rods are actually built that way. Today we have street machines that sport all the visual cues with twin turbos, fuel injection, big-inch wheels, and exotic suspensions, but most of these street pretenders have never seen the inside of a road course, let alone a dragstrip. Pro Touring is in the eye of the beholder, being defined as anything from a drum-brake car with 20-inch wheels to a capable daily driver to a full-on show car with the obligatory Baer and Global West goodies. Somewhere in there are a few guys who actually use them to blast an apex, or who have bolted on tires that will hook up 1,100hp turbo power.
This year we got about 50 entries for Real Street Eliminator, and we culled them down to the 25 shown in this issue ("Homebuilt Supercars," page 78). For the first time ever, Car Craft's readers rather than staffers will decide the seven cars that will participate in our dragstrip/road-course/on-road showdown. Overall we were very impressed with the quality and types of cars that entered, but at the same time, you can probably eyeball the story and separate the poseurs from the players. There are a couple obvious drag racers who succumbed to the 18-inch-wheel trend. There are a lot of very nice street machines that have probably never seen a track of any kind, and a couple of cars that will probably clean up on the road course. There are show cars that obviously fear rock chips and show cars that will probably surprise you. I really can't wait to see how you vote. Will you choose by brand or by power? Do you want to see the poseurs go humiliate themselves, or are you voting for competence? Either way, now's your chance to make your statement. You can vote just once for RSE competitors at CarCraft.com, plus name the single car that you think will win overall. Do it before July 22, then come back in a few months to see what may be the baddest RSE yet.-David Freiburger
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