Factory Five Kit Cars vs a Lamborghini Gallardo! - HOT ROD Unlimited Episode 27 - video Dailymotion

MotorTrend

On this episode of HOT ROD Unlimited

Transcript

00:00 Today we're at Valley of Fire State Park shooting a story for the magazine. We got four Factory 5 cars

00:04 We're gonna take the Las Vegas Motor Speedway and the Dragstrip

00:07 We're gonna show you what you can do with a car you can build in your garage

00:11 Factory 5 offers kit cars that you can build in your own garage. What makes them cool is you can actually thrash on these cars

00:21 It's hard to drive an original Shelby Cobra or original Shelby coupe as hard as you can drive a Factory 5 car

00:30 When Dave Smith created the company he looked at the other project cars on the market. They looked great, but they didn't perform

00:36 He decided to build kit cars that were better constructed and faster

00:40 We just finished up the photo shoot for the magazine and now we're heading to Las Vegas Motor Speedway

00:44 Dave Smith threw us the keys to a couple of the cars. So staff editor Brandon Galoglia and I drove him to the track

00:49 It's a race car

00:59 When people ask me, you know what Factory 5 does I always say well we sell projects and if you think about it guy

01:04 Who's gonna build his own car?

01:05 We give him the substrate parts

01:07 So the chassis the body suspension interior trim pieces lighting basically all the parts of a car except for the running gear

01:13 And that's where Summit came in. Summit Racing teamed up with Factory 5 to produce drivetrain packages

01:18 So now you can get everything for a project car delivered to your front door with a click of a mouse

01:22 First we're taking the cars to the strip to see how they do in the quarter-mile

01:27 We brought in our resident race car driver Mike Essa owner of GSR Autosport. He'll be driving the cars today to get accurate numbers

01:33 First to bat is ride techs 33 Ford replica. It's powered by a 427 small block that made 510 horsepower to the wheels and

01:42 496 foot-pounds of torque. It's got a dart aluminum block and Holley Dominator EFI system with this naturally aspirated horsepower

01:49 No hood, no fenders and twelve and a half inch tires on all four corners. This thing is badass

01:54 (car engine)

01:56 (car engine)

01:58 (car engine)

02:00 (car engine)

02:02 (car engine)

02:04 (car engine)

02:06 (car engine)

02:08 (car engine)

02:10 (car engine)

02:12 1154 at 123 miles per hour

02:14 Despite the big tires the 33 had slow 60 foot times, but it had really fast trap speed at 123 miles per hour

02:21 (car engine)

02:23 Next up is the blue Daytona coupe. It's got similar suspension geometry to the Cobra replicas, but it's got a longer wheelbase

02:29 It's powered by a 363 crate engine before coming to Vegas a dyno

02:34 426 horsepower and

02:36 369 foot-pounds of torque

02:38 The rear end is a Ford 8.8 with a 327 gear ratio

02:41 It hit the scales at 2460 pounds

02:45 (car engine)

02:47 (car engine)

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02:51 (car engine)

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02:55 (car engine)

02:57 (car engine)

02:59 (car engine)

03:01 (car engine)

03:02 1187 at 117 miles per hour. Not bad for its first time in the quarter mile

03:08 (car engine)

03:10 Up next is a red Mark 4 Cobra replica. This is Dave Smith's personal car

03:14 It's powered by a 5 liter coyote engine that dynoed at 388 rear wheel horsepower and 330 foot-pounds of torque

03:20 It hits the scales at

03:22 2243 pounds

03:24 (car engine)

03:26 (car engine)

03:28 (car engine)

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03:38 1174 at 118 miles per hour

03:41 Not bad for a car running the same engine you find in a brand new Mustang GT

03:45 (car engine)

03:47 Last up is the Summit Racing Mark 4 Cobra replica. The car features a 427 from Summit Racing

03:53 Although this 427 is based on a 351 Windsor block. It dynoed at 372 horsepower with 461 foot-pounds of torque

04:01 It weighs in just over 2200 pounds

04:04 It's the only carbureted car we have today. With a short wheelbase and not much weight in the back

04:09 We don't know if the car is going to hook up. Although this car does have more torque than any of the other ones we're testing

04:15 (car engine)

04:33 1150 at 115 miles per hour

04:35 This was the quickest of the day

04:37 None of the cars we tested have been on the quarter mile before

04:40 The times they lay down aren't that bad. Especially for a car you can build in your garage

04:44 (car engine)

04:46 The interesting thing was the 33 had the fastest trap speed at 123 miles per hour but the slowest 60 foot times

04:54 On the flip side of that, the Summit Racing 427 Cobra replica had the best 60 foot times but the lowest trap speed at 115 miles per hour

05:03 This is because the Summit car had the most torque out of any other car

05:07 (car engine)

05:13 Now we're next door at Exotics Racing's road course

05:16 Exotics Racing offers a ride and drive packages for a huge fleet of different exotic cars

05:21 Exotics Racing is about driving the most beautiful cars on a racetrack environment

05:27 Where really you can use these cars at the full power and the full capacities of their engine, their power, their handling

05:33 We have a little bit over 35 cars that we can use on our track and you can drive them at the limit

05:38 This is a 1.2 mile, 7 turn, intermediate road course with nice long straights and a combination of different corners

05:45 Exotics Racing brought out their driver Fred Jorhuis to drive the Lamborghini Gallardo LP 550

05:51 This is a 2 wheel drive, 542 horsepower supercar

05:54 We're going to use this as a baseline to determine how our factory 5 cars stack up against the Lamborghini

06:00 (car engine)

06:02 The Lamborghini looks smooth and balanced on the road course

06:05 (car engine)

06:09 Every corner it looked like it was taking pretty good and the power was coming on, never looked unsettled, never got sideways

06:14 It made us a little bit nervous

06:16 (car engine)

06:21 It laid down a best time at 54.53 seconds

06:24 (car engine)

06:26 Up first is a red Mark IV

06:28 (car engine)

06:34 With a short wheelbase the car quickly becomes unsettled, you really have to stay on your toes

06:38 (car engine)

06:42 Power delivery is quick off the corners

06:44 (car engine)

06:56 It laid down a best lap of 55.26 seconds

06:59 Not even a full second slower than the Lamborghini

07:02 That's pretty good for a 5 liter

07:04 (car engine)

07:07 Next up is the blue Daytona Coupe

07:09 (car engine)

07:11 Looking at this thing it begs to be on a road course

07:13 (car engine)

07:17 I definitely killed that lap

07:19 (car engine)

07:21 Oh yeah, full tire on the first lap

07:23 (car engine)

07:24 With the longer wheelbase and the better body, it's got a little bit better weight transfer

07:28 (car engine)

07:32 So going into the corner and coming out is a little bit smoother

07:35 And you don't have to be as quick on the gas and steering wheel as you do with the Cobra replica

07:40 (car engine)

07:43 The car handles and drives just like it looks, like a race car

07:46 (car engine)

07:48 55.6 seconds, still not as fast as the Lamborghini, but definitely up to pace

07:53 (car engine)

07:56 Up next is the black 33 Ford replica

07:59 Despite its looks, this thing is fast

08:02 With the other cars you could feel the braking point approaching, but not so much with the 33

08:07 With Mike, it looked like he was getting away from him on some of the corners

08:10 (car engine)

08:15 Initially the car looks like it's loose, but after a few laps the tires started heating up and it started to grip

08:21 (car engine)

08:25 53.89 seconds, faster than the Lamborghini

08:29 I'm really excited that we were able to not only beat the Lamborghini, but to get all these cars very close to the Lamborghini's time

08:36 I think that really showed what these cars are capable of

08:38 These factory 5 cars range from $20,000 to $50,000

08:41 Just think, you can build this car in your garage and smoke a $200,000 Lamborghini

08:45 So we did the testing, we beat the Lamborghini

08:50 But there's one thing left we gotta do, and that's cruise the strip

08:54 (music)

09:13 (car engine)

09:36 (beep)

09:41 Did you get a good look at that cario?

09:43 Yeah, it was a lot closer than I wanted it to be, that's for sure

09:46 I think I might have had a little target fixation, because I looked right at it

09:50 Both when I was going at it, forwards and backwards

09:53 And I think I wound up, I don't know, about 8 feet away or so?

09:57 I don't even want to leave the skid marks to know, but maybe I'll stick to the Cobras that are a little more manageable

Factory Five Kit Cars vs a Lamborghini Gallardo! - HOT ROD Unlimited Episode 27

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