Sniffer Goes Drag Racing!

From:
John Wayland dat1200@europa.com

Hello to all,

On Sat Apr.15th we took 'White Zombie' to the Woodburn Dragstrips' 'All Import Challenge', to race it against the gas powered, hopped-up imports. Unfortunately, we got rained out after just a couple of runs, but we still had a great time. Since I had Bruce Meland towing the car and trailer with his trusty Toyota Tacoma pickup, Rich and I hopped in Sniffer(my recently aquired year 2000, 70 mpg Honda Insight Hybrid) and followed the truck as we got 76 mpg in the process. Once we arrived at the track and the excitement was building as my adrenaline was pumping, something came over me....something that I could not stop....something, something made me do it. Before I realized what I was doing, there was white shoe polish all over the car's windows and my brand new Insight was in the staging lanes. Sniffer was a huge hit with the largely 18-25 year old male crowd, and they were amazed that I was preparing to drag race an 80 mpg car.

I made one pass with Sniffer, and when I pulled into the burnout pit, I decided to put on a bit of a show and locked up the emergency brake and proceeded to do a genuine Waylandesque smoke show. To my surprise, Sniffer lit up both of his front tires, so the car must have some sort of limited slip differential. The crowd went nuts and started to scream and applaud for the little silver spaceship car with smoke peeling out of its swoopy front fenders. Up to the staging lights, on my right was a girl in a more conventional Honda, but it was far from stock, a bit massaged, and ready to clean my clock. I really didn't care and I had no aspirations to beat anyone with my fume-sniffer, but rather, I was just curious as to what kind of time Sniffer could turn. The christmas tree lights marched down and I gave Sniffer an easy, non clutch popping start to reduce the abuse factor as much as possible. I had predicted that it would run mid 18s at around 70 mph...it ran 18.7 seconds @ 69.8 mph!

Oh yeah, I lost not too badly to the Honda on my right, and it was a girl driving it , but it was fun being the first (I think) to drag race an Insight. Though 18.7 isn't anything to write home about, it is nonetheless a significant number, in that it is still about 2 seconds quicker than what a Geo Metro can muster up...a car that gets 30 mpg LESS than the Insight.

See Ya........
John Wayland