You know that guy in drinking contests who drinks till he can't feel feelings anymore, flings controllers when he loses a video game, pounds the handball after being served a mean slicey, pees on the winning car of a drag race, or generally goes apeshit after a loss? Well, I'm that guy. I hate losing. Calling myself a sore loser is like calling Steve Buscemi a little weird looking-a severe understatement. My hunger for First is so bad that I've come to completely avoid competition-type scenarios, lest my K-fury comes out rampaging, leaving me in a wake of humiliation.
But after eight months of the Castrol Syntec Top Shop Challenge, the results are in, and I couldn't be any more proud. While our SR20DET didn't win (damn you, AMS!) we came in a respectable Second Place, beating out six other magazines and their respective shops and motors. Normally, First Place loser sucks big donkey balls, but in this case, with the level of competition, and what we were trying to accomplish with a four-cylinder Nissan on pump gas, I was amazed that we even finished. I admit, we've had our bravado and came up with some bold statements in past trash talk articles, but inside I was jittery and crying like a little baby. What if we lost? Worse-blew up? Reputations, after all, were on the line.
But at the end of the day, G-Dimension, a local Nissan tuning shop with the full-time staff of two, went up against AMS and their 30-plus employees, Cosworth and their Formula 1 pedigree, Lowrider magazine and their years of small-block experience, SP Engineering's numerous 1,000+ hp builds, and didn't get annihilated. And while I'd like to say it was all thanks to our staff-it wasn't. In the end, kudos goes to project manager, temporary insomniac, and wrench extraordinaire Stephen Rhim, and shop owner James Chang for numerous hours of toiled labor, as well as Alex Pfeiffer (where do I put my deposit down for that crazy ass manifold?) and tuning wizard Leon Chang who regularly contribute to the G-Dimension cause.
A number of people also contributed immensely to this build: Mikey from Superior Nissan, Geoff at Full-Race, Dave at HeadGames, Kyle at Garrett, Greg at AEM, John at Darton Sleeves, Darius at CP, Willy at Supertech, Eric at Eric's Performance Parts, Mike and Rick at Speed-O-Motive, John at RC Engineering, Wayne at Phase2Motortrend, Cliff at G&J Aircraft, Koji at Driftspeed, Mark at Mazworx and Tom at Ross Machine Racing. Their companies and products are listed in the full tech story, but beyond the parts, they spent hours of their time and energy offering up advice and expressing their concerns. Sorry we didn't win, but hey, at least we weren't the ultimate losers... we'll get 'em next time!
Until then, brb... I'm going to go pee on AMS' 4G63.
Editor
Carter Jung
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