The second half of the first day of the Import Meet Street Car Competition was broken into three categories: Ride Quality, Car Show, and Build Quality. A quick reference guide for the competitors can be found here. Read all about how the IMSCC scoring system works here.
Photos by Dominic Wilkerson and Matt Haugness. Text by Matt Haugness.
After finishing the dyno portion of the IMSCC the competitors moved over to Achtuning in Redmond, Washington to finish the day. Their facility was host to the Ride Quality, Car Show, and Build Quality portions of the competition. These were the only subjective categories in the IMSCC all judged by people that we felt were the most qualified and unbiased. Read more about the judges in this post.
Ride Quality
The purpose of the Ride Quality category was to find out which of the cars was the best at being a street car. The intent has always been to penalize gutted cars or ones with minimal interior modifications. This year the official import model for the event, Valeria Boo, was the judge of the Ride Quality portion of the IMSCC. She went for a short ride in all of the cars so that she could give her opinion of each of the cars. The key areas that she was judging were comfort, practicality, audio system, harshness, and overall impression. After returning from each ride, Valeria used a 50 point judging sheet to determine the scores for the cars.
When it came down to points there were some distinct levels of separation. In the top group was Andy Nissen-Barber’s 2002 BMW M3 and Dan Nguyen’s 2010 Nissan GT-R. Both cars had pristine luxury interior and similar to stock suspension in terms of stiffness. Andy managed to score one more point than Dan on the judging sheet so he received the maximum of 55 points in this category.
In the middle group was David Otzwirk’s 2003 Mitsubishi Evo, Johnny Nelson’s 1994 Toyota Supra, and Jeff Vuong’s 2004 Subaru STi. All placed in the thirties in terms of points because of similar interior modifications and comfort levels.
The oldest cars of the bunch had a hard time competing in this portion of the IMSCC. Matthew Bueler’s 1991 Nissan 300ZX was clean inside but according to Valeria the car was loud and the suspension was stiff. Blake Henney’s 1990 Honda Prelude had minimal interior mods and no stereo so it did little to impress her. The straight-cut gears and twin disc clutch probably didn’t help much either. Blake ended up getting last place in this event which meant that he received only 5 of the possible 55 points.
Click here to find out how these points were calculated.
Car Show
Our Car Show judge for the IMSCC this year was John Schommer – a content creator for ForzaMotorsport.net and avid car collector/builder. While looking closely at each of the cars, John spent time with each of the owners to learn about their builds and why they did the things they did. This allowed him to assign point values in various categories of the 175 point judging sheet. The main areas he judged are listed below:
- Exterior – 40 points
- Interior – 25 points
- Engine/Transmission/Differential – 50 points
- Suspension/Brakes/Wheels – 25 points
- Audio/Visual/Extras – 15 points
- Overall Impression – 20 points
The clear winner and car that took a substantial lead in this category was Andy’s BMW M3. The quality vinyl wrap, audio modifications, and level of performance modifications allowed the car to receive nearly max points in all of the judged areas. Scoring first place gave Andy 55 points in this event.
Johnny’s Supra also did very well in the car show. After the BMW, this was the second most complete build. The only areas that hurt Johnny were the lack of exterior modifications and no significant audio mods. He still placed second in the car show category and received 40 out of 55 points possible.
Dan’s GT-R wasn’t as modified as the some of the other cars but the overall quality and how well the mods flowed put him into third place for the show. The Evo and STi placed very close to each other primarily due to the lack of engine modifications.
Blake’s Prelude has always been the sleeper of the group so it wasn’t a surprise when it placed low in the exterior and interior areas on the judging sheet. This brought his judged score much lower than most of the other cars in the group but he still received 16.4 out of 55 points.
The lack of interior/audio modifications and some engine/exterior cleanliness issues hurt Matthew’s 300ZX. By placing last it meant that Matthew only received 5 points for the car show part of the IMSCC.
Click here to find out how these points were calculated.
Build Quality
Kelly Campbell returned as a judge of Build Quality this year along with Steve and Cam from Ishii Motor Industries. Steve and Cam built Stu Hagen’s Toyota Supra that took first place in Build Quality and first place overall in last year’s IMSCC. They know how to properly build modified import cars so it was great to have them on board this year. The intent with this category was to award up to 100 points between the following categories:
- Cleanliness
- Fabrication
- Execution
- Overall Quality of the Build
A change from last year is that Steve and Cam decided to do a full tech inspection while the cars were on the lifts. This allowed them to find problem areas that would show an incomplete build or neglect in maintenance. This also meant that they could warn the competitors of potential issues before they started to actually race their cars the next day.
The judges found some glaring errors with David’s Mitsubishi Evo. David admitted that some of them were due to rushing to get the car ready for the event. They took the time to notify him of the problems in hopes that he would fix them before autocross the next day. These issues placed him at the bottom of the group with a judged score of 35/100. This meant that he only received 5 points overall for Build Quality.
Johnny’s Supra and Matthew’s 300ZX also placed near the bottom of the group primarily due to the lack of direction with their builds. They informed the judges of their goals with their cars but their builds didn’t exactly match what they said they were trying to accomplish.
Jeff’s STi and Dan’s GT-R both did well mostly because their engines weren’t heavily modified. The cars were balanced but since they had mild performance modifications it meant that there wasn’t as much to go wrong.
Blake’s Prelude was on track to do very well in this particular event but due to a power steering line failure right before the competition, a lot of the engine bay was dirty. This was difficult for the judges to overlook but he still managed to place second and receive 48 out of 55 points.
Taking first place was Andy and his BMW M3. The judges were impressed with the level of completeness of his build along with how clean the undercarriage was. The car was heavily modified but many of the parts met or exceeded stock quality. Receiving a judged score of 85/100 points meant that Andy received the full 55 points for the Build Quality part of the IMSCC.
Click here to find out how these points were calculated.
Day 1 Overall Points
At the end of day one Andy and his 2002 BMW M3 had an 81 point lead over the next closest car. Placing first in all three of the subjective events gave him a substantial boost over both Johnny and his 1994 Toyota Supra and Blake and his 1990 Honda Prelude. Johnny was in second place at the end of the day followed closely by Blake.
Placing low in both the Car Show and Build Quality portions of the day hurt both David with his 2003 Mitsubishi Evolution and Matthew and his 1991 Nissan 300ZX.
The IMSCC is a constantly evolving event. Stay tuned for updates on how we plan on changing things up next year. If you are interested in competing in our 2015 competition, fill out the form below to let us know that you’re interested.
Other IMSCC 2014 coverage articles:
Day 1 Part One: Retail Price, Peak Horsepower, and Power Delivery
Day 2: Autocross, 0-60-0, Skidpad and Fuel Economy
Day 3: Drag Racing and Final Results
Special Thanks to Our IMSCC Sponsors:
