West Coast $2009 Challenger - AWD Fiero Hybrid

You should see his handi-work in person. I would have given up loooong ago. That car is way beyond my skill set. I swear there's more wiring in that thing than all 4 of my cars combined.

If Bryce doesn't win "best-engineered" there is no hope.

Bryce! Sorry we got disconnected when you were traveling through the Bay Area! I got Jessica's VM late last night.

Anyway, as you can see I couldn't make it... Anyway, go to registration and pick up my SWAG! I figure I paid, I should get a damn T-Shirt! If you guys come back up the coast on the way home, you need to stop by and say hi and let me check out the Fierohybrid!

Good news: The Fiero was the fastest $2009 car there.

Bad news: The Fiero was the only $2009 car there.

Bryce

So do you get every trophy? And the tires?

Trophy? Tires? I don't even know if that stuff exists for the West Coast event. Hell, since I'm the only one who showed, I don't even know if it counts as an event. I'd gladly take a set of tires and some trophies though!

It sure has been a hell of a lot of work to get the car done to compete down here, just to have zero competition. I'm sure the organizers feel the same way. The concours is supposed to be today...instead of detailing the car, my crew (Jessica, Rick, Devin, Al) all headed to the beach. I'm going to reinstall the passenger seat and center console, wash the car, and call it good enough. At this point, I'm just going through the motions for the sake of going through the motions. Tomorrow's autocross will probably be pretty lax as well, as I have zero competitors. It sure feels like a hollow win!!!

Bryce

Wow, for all the griping people did about not having a west coast venu for the $200X challenge you would expect more than one competitor...

Bummer

I got 38 emails this morning from the other teams, explaining that they had read Bryce's build thread and decided they couldn't win.

Let's be fair here... San Diego is pretty far away for most of the people that expressed interest (ThunderCougarFalconGoat, fiat22turbo, Nashco, myself) but more importantly the dates kept changing. You G-Ville guys have the security of knowing stuff is chiseled in stone way in advance.

I would have loved to have gone even just to spectate, but getting laid off twice in 2009 put a monkey wrench through plans for a long time. I'm just now getting caught back up on everything. I feel bad that Bryce got basically no help building this thing and then no competition once he got down there.

Id throw in $50 to fund shipping Bryce and the Eiero to the East Coast event.

Yes, bryce is the man!

No one else? Wow...that's pretty weak.

Great job on the build Bryce. I've been following it and can't wait to see it if you bring it down to Gainesville.

I'd support Bryce to G-Ville as well.

Where do I papal my $50?

Me too, unless the mag decides to sponsor him to go down there.

Might seem unfair to other competitors, but a build like this is EXACTLY what GRM is all about.......

I'm in a similar boat with P71, having been laid off twice this year and essentially meant I wa treading water to not end up living in my challenge ride.

Never mind paying for the trip to San Diego and back without a tow rig.

Combine the above facts with the uncertainty of the event (appreciate the effort put forth, really I do!) dates and mix in a challenge project that was worse than I originally thought it was for the amount of help I had on hand and you get the smoking crater that was my entry.

between the beating my body took in the preparation of my car, the delayed honey-dos around the house and the mess that my car and the event was in, I just felt it wasn't worth it to kill myself to attempt it and be miserable the entire time.

Realistically though, I simply wasn't as hard core as Bryce. I doff my cap to him and I think he deserves all the accolades he is due.

I'm in for support to G-ville. I may not be able to swing $50 right now, but I can squeeze something out of the budget.

I have to say, this utterly sucks. I certainly appreciate the effort, but the moving dates, the economy and the distance were the real enemies here.

I can't claim any of these as my excuse as I'm gainfully employed, planned to make the event, have a trailer and tow vehicle and could have made it. I was simply too tired from the Buttonwillow LeMons event and wasn't motivated enough to bang some body panels back into shape, replace a head gasket and "re-load" the trailer.

Dare I say it, but having the event in NorCal with fixed dates well ahead of time and an economic recovery will greatly improve the attendance.

Yes, this is a partially selfish statement since I live in the SFBay... ;)

But it would make the travel effort for WA, OR, UT, NV, AZ, NM, WY, MT, ID, CO participants much more "balanced". Unfortunately, San Diego cut's the geographic accessibility in half.

Hey this is Justin, team leader of Midnight Boba, participant and top competitor of the sd grand challenge. We have the white 72, datsun 240z with the 240sx motor (running e85), that we turbocharged for drags and run n/a for autox. here is a link to hybridz with some info on our car. Hybridz.org or: ka-t.org

I'm really looking forward to seeing you at autox today! i want to see the cars hybrid system. Was looking forward to it for some time now! To me its the famous 2009 challenge hybrid fiero! everybody was talking about your car down here!

Also, I was not going in this event thinking i would have a chance at winning. we thought the mustange with nos, or the truck with turbo and nos would beat us, at drags, and would be middle field at best with autox, but we are doing well at this point despite that thought. Whoever didn't show cause they thought they would not be competitive... come on man! there are 3 events, try your best and you may come out a winner, or not!

anyways, i'm really bummed that not one other 2009 car showed up! But we are still glad you came to join us, and I hope that you have fun and remeber, Speed Channel is gonna be there filming, so you might see your self on TV.

I think you guys should get a huge tripple decker trophy for going through with it, and winning! i still think its not a shallow win, cause the other teams could not get the main objective going: making it to the event with a completed car! I'm not saying this with any disregard to those who didn;t show, im just sayin this cause you should feel good about seeing it through from start to finnish against all odds! And because i've been through some tough building and fabricating times, and a tough season of racing with our car, i feel for you and i'm proud and happy to see you here! Congrats, and good job to you're team! I'll see you later today at the track! I just got done pulling off the turbo setup, lol!

The turnout just goes to show you that GRM made a very smart decision to not move the entire Challenge out to the West Coast. Tim's post about making such a big change at a time when the economy is slow and so many unknowns was almost prophetic. Just goes to show you that you can't gauge interest in an event based on internet board chatter.

I hope it catches on out there. I just moved from SD and I would have loved to have been there. I even contacted a buddy who writes for a local paper hoping he might give it some coverage. Oh well...

I won the West Coast $2009 Challenge and all I got was this cheap trophy.

Bryce

I think you won a hell of a lot of respect and admiration of gear-heads everywhere for what it's worth. Congratulations, you earned the E36 M3 out of it!

You could always build a bigger base from the empty High Life cans...

Team Unit Racing showed up to Autocross on Sunday.

How did the event work, did you run along side the grand challengers? Did you actually get to autoX it? How did it drive?

RXBeetle wrote: I think you won a hell of a lot of respect and admiration of gear-heads everywhere for what it's worth.

Amen. Sorry everyone else bailed on you. If you want to take a run at going to gainesville, say the word and my $50 is on the way.

First of all...all you guys who bailed for whatever reason, please don't bother posting any more "why it's ok that I'm a wuss" excuses in my build thread. I GUARANTEE that I had more reasons not to show up to the challenge than you...but rather than whine about why I couldn't make it, I sucked it up and worked that much harder. So many people, including myself, asked for a West Coast event that I thought for sure I'd have at least a few good competitors to race against and share a margarita and a burrito with down in San Diego. It's a good thing my friends came out to visit and help out with the Fiero, otherwise that would have been a very lonely margarita.

Secondly, I'd gladly bring the Fiero out to Florida for the REAL $2009 challenge if I had the time/money. I burned through all of my vacation time to attend the West Coast event and can't really justify spending another $xxxx to ship the car down to Florida and fly down. If any of you are actually serious about chipping in to fund my trip, that would be super cool... you can paypal nashco (at) hotmail (dot) com and I'll see if enough trickles in to fund getting the car trucked down to FL. If I get enough to cover trucking the car down, I'll buy a plane ticket and meet it down there for the Challenge. If I don't end up going, I'll refund you in paypal...and I think you'll all agree I'm good for my word when I say I'm going to do something.

The car made it home last night. I put about 2500 miles on it round trip, including four passes down the drag strip, several hours in stop and go traffic, and several long mountain passes. I was really impressed that the car made the whole drive with only a few minor issues...of my last three road trips to CA, this one went the smoothest! The car was jam packed with "stuff" and passengers (Jessica was with me the whole drive). As you can see, this isn't a show piece, the car was made for driving!

I ended up leaving town after the car show on Saturday. As I said to David, since I won the drag and car show by default, it seemed pointless to do an autocross against zero competitors over 1000 miles away from home. I'll do an autocross locally sometime soon, I'm interested to see how the front drive motor works out around the cones. I didn't even bother attending the autocross; instead, my crew and I headed to the beach, stuffed our faces with food, and enjoyed some fantastic SoCal traffic jams.

After a long couple of days driving home with plenty of time to think about it, I'm a bit jaded with how things went down. I am really bummed that I didn't have any competition and even more bummed that Tim (Suddard) didn't think much of the car. Maybe I caught him on an off day, maybe he was pissed about nobody else showing and it came out in his general attitude, or maybe GRM doesn't think things like AWD Fieros are worth spending time on when there are Mazdas, Hondas, and BMWs out there. Either way, I busted my ass to get the car there and functional, and I take pride in the fact that I successfully followed through on what I set out to do. After all, it's not every day you hear of a DIY hybrid capable of cross-country travelling and AWD racing being built in three months for a couple thousand bucks.

I'm trying to gather pictures and videos from my friends that attended and from Tim, since I was either too busy or too braindead to take many pictures over the weekend. I'll post some up as soon as I get them gathered. I also owe some updates on the last week or so of building, since I was so busy that I didn't have time to post updates. Stay tuned.

Bryce