[Biggins]

Yesterday marks having the car for four years! I cannot believe I’ve had it this long, but it really has turned into only an autocross car. I did get some free used Pirelli winter tires from my coworker who got a new set for his Focus ST, so it was driven a little in the winter more than previous years, but this car still sucks in the snow. I don’t really understand why, but it just doesn’t work in the snow at all compared to the E36. I’ve said this before, but this car is almost good enough to be a daily driver, but it’s not a good city car at all. I still very much have the itch to find another car, but I don’t think I’ll replace the FR-S anytime soon.

Autocross has been the purpose of the car for the past three years, and I’ve struggled a good bit this year trying to get the car right to my driving. I made two changes to the car in the off-season. The first was to add TRD lowering springs (linear front, progressive rear) that were deemed legal for my car a couple years ago. The springs lowered the car about 1-1.2 inches, and it’s taken a good bit of time for me to get used to the change. The car actually became a little vague on course in spots where I always had the feel for what was next… The other change I made was trying the new Kumho V720 tire. This tire really works well with the car and seems to have made the car have stability in high speed transitions, slaloms, and braking. Every chance I’ve tried to test this tire against the benchmark Bridgestone RE71R (which I also have), it has rained or been variable conditions. When comparing times to other consistent autocrossers, they seem to be about as fast, but my gut is telling me the Bridgestone is faster by a not insignificant margin. People on the internet have said the Kumho V720 delaminates and falls apart very quickly, but I have 53 runs on these tires now including a couple events of codrivers, and they still look brand new.

The results I’ve had this year have been all over the place. The new ND Miata is in my class now and is very fast and will probably beat my FR-S on 50-75% of the courses with a decent driver. Locally, I’ve been up against two top drivers in an ND, but I’ve yet to get a good comparison due to weather and breakage/severe reliability concerns with their ND. I had one of them driving my car at the last event, but rain prevented a good comparison of their driving vs mine (in my car). Since the ND Miatas were broken and other owners were fearful of breaking, the DC ProSolo that John V won ended up being my best event since I started autocrossing. I missed the win by 0.062 seconds and was a little disappointed about losing by so little, but I did win some Kumho money to use for more tires. I also got to be in the shootout that John V won, but I lost in the first round to multi-time champ in a Corvette. I’m still hooked on the autocross thing, but I’ve been trying hard to cautiously select events so I don’t get burnt out. I would like to go to Nationals again, but I have to stick to local events from now until then.

I still browse turbo and supercharger kits for the FR-S every once in a while, but it’s still a pretty good as it is. I drove a BRZ with a header/tune and fancy suspension a few months ago, and it is a totally different animal. It truly transformed the car and reminded of going from an E36 318i to a 328is: it was the same car and did the same things, but it was just substantially better in every way. I’ve resisted the urge to go that route because it’s probably an extra $5-10k in parts to do all of that the way I’d want.

Other than that, I’m still eyeing the Honda Civic Type R and Ford Focus RS as my next “daily driver.” The more realistic outcome is that I end up with a used Civic Si or Fiesta ST. For now, I’ll keep plugging along with the FR-S with the growing number of stacks of tires in my basement.