Attention racers,
Event 16 is over, and here are the abridged results:
Full results and more on the event sheet.
PHLS#17 officially starts now. The winning theme: GTI Origins. All the details, eligible cars, and track selection to be added shortly in the main post.
The story
Today, when you think of a high-powered compact, you think “hot hatch”. The term is said to have been coined in 1983 in the UK. The Golf GTI is sometimes called the original hot hatch, the first example of this type of car. But the “Sports Golf” wasn’t a new concept by any margin.
Long before Volkswagen engineers, tinkerers and engine whisperers had the idea of turning family compacts into road missiles. John Cooper and Carlo Abarth made a name for themselves turning Minis and Fiat 500s into racing cars. Over in France, Renault would give the keys of the Renault 8 to Amédée Gordini, who’d turn the obsolete economy sedan into a French racing legend. In Britain, it was Ford tasking Lotus with turning yet another family car into a sporting sedan, while BMW would do the same to its 2002, even introducing turbocharging in Europe and attracting the ire of regulators with its mirrored sticker. In Japan, Toyota sportified the Corolla while at Nissan someone had the idea of beefing up the Bluebird/510. And although the notion of a “compact” in the US is somewhat different, putting big engines into them almost goes without saying.
What the Golf GTI brought to sport compacts was a name. An acronym once reserved for grand tourers, the GTI badge became synonymous with high-powered compacts. This week, we’ll stroll through this history and put some of these cars to the test.
This week, a new feature appears. Up until now, you’ve had to use the CAR# marker with car ordinal numbers to submit times, e.g. CAR#1486. Which works fine for a computer, but isn’t the most convenient for humans.
I’m introducing a new identifier system based on the car names, that will be hopefully easier to remember, e.g. CAR#Cortina.
Identifiers will be posted on the top post’s car list along with the ordinal number. Identifiers aren’t case-sensitive, but must be spelled exactly. You may still use the ordinals, both should work interchangeably.
Let me know what you think of it as you use it, if it’s better, worse, or not much different, or if there’s any issue.