Go! Whoa!

If you think about it, that’s what performance is all about. It’s old school now to have a car that leaves as though it were launched off the U.S.S. Enterprise but stops like a dump truck full of sand. In search of the ultimate go-whoa machine, Chevy High Performance staged the third in a series of 0-100-0 Shootouts in search of fast machines that can also hang out the anchor and pile up pavement in front of the front tires.

This year we recruited six street Chevys to put it all on the line in the name of good clean fun. The object of this exercise is brutally simple. Hammer the throttle and see how quickly you can scream the car up to 100 mph. Then stand on the binders and see how quickly you can haul your almost two-ton machine back down to a full stop.

It sounds easy, but it isn’t. In testing over 20 cars and trucks, we’ve found that combining the two disciplines is tough. Technology is a wonderful thing, and while horsepower is still king, big brakes have become hip as well. From the onset of our 0-100-0 escapades, Baer Racing cooperated by loaning us its Tracker radar test setup and Dan Palmer, who ran the computer and radar gun package.

The Test

Before we introduce the players, it’s important to review our test procedures just so you know how we pulled all this off. The key to this test is the Tracker radar gun system. The Tracker uses a radar gun to capture the acceleration and braking run of each car. The acceleration rates and distances measured by the radar gun are downloaded to software that spits out the performance data. In order to make this a fair test, all three of the CHP 0-100-0 tests were performed as the car accelerated through the quarter-mile, well past 100 mph. Once the car had cleared the quarter-mile finish line, the driver nailed the brakes and the gun measured the distance required to stop. This process eliminates driver-reaction times and measures just how quickly the car can brake from 100 mph to a full stop.

One other item worth mentioning is that we looked for the best overall run for each car. That may mean that the best quarter-mile e.t. and speed may not necessarily be the same run used for the best overall 0-100-0 run.

The Cars

Again this year, our contest pitted early musclecars against high-tech new Camaros that benefit from big sticky tires and ABS brakes. For example, Baer brought its ’99 Camaro equipped not only with a Vortech supercharger, but also with six-piston Alcon brake calipers and monster rotors. The silver ’01 Heritage Camaro was also fitted with factory ABS and fat tires, so we knew it would also qualify as a great braker. Richard Small offered his ’72 big-block 502ci Chevelle with stock brakes that promised to be fun. Bryon Pryde brought out his ’69 big-block Chevelle, which also has stock front discs and rear drums.

Hotchkis Performance recently built a ’71 LS1-powered Camaro fitted with Baer discs on all four corners and we figured it would be a leading contender. Just for fun, we also included our Agent 87 test bed ’65 El Camino, which belongs to Patrick Peterson. The El Camino sports a set of ’70 Chevelle front disc brakes with rear drums and we wanted to see how well that combination would work.

While in the past we have used a single driver for all the cars, this year Baer’s Scott Gillman did most of the driving, while Tim Moore drove Pat Peterson’s El Camino, and Bryon Pride drove his own car. The charts tell the story, but there were a few interesting accomplishments that may escape notice. Certainly the ABS-equipped cars rule the braking distances. The two late-model Camaros stopped in less than 330 feet and Baer’s Black Bart almost dipped into the sub-300-foot category.

Richard Small’s Chevelle ran a corrected 13.04/107.11 mph pass and matched that effort with a great 378-foot stop with Scott behind the wheel and nothing more than stock 11-inch front discs, 9.5-inch rear drums, and a set of Kragen semi-metallic brake pads. According to Richard, the last time the Chevelle was tuned was for the Hot Rod Power Tour about three years ago. Equally impressive was Bryon Pryde’s white ’69 Chevelle (another Power Tour veteran) that ran a corrected 12.71/107.22 mph. Bryon bolted on a set of 255/60R15 BFGoodrich Drag Radials, ran three 12-second passes, bolted his street tires back on, and drove home. How cool is that?

The best part about all of our go-whoa competitors is that these are real street cars. They’re not necessarily all Pro Touring candidates, and that’s OK. The point is they’re all real cars that are driven all the time. One sign of an honest street car is that it performs as good as it looks, and looks as good as it performs. From that standpoint, they’re all winners.