Willow Springs Raceway

Hanging With SCC's Pack Of Buds
In late June, SCC's editors sent out invitations to various friends of the magazine to come out to the Horse Thief Mile circuit at Willow Springs Raceway for a day on the track. They could bring whatever it was they had-this wasn't a comparison test or a shootout, but a chance to get together and rip the tires off our cars in celebration of the magazine's pending birthday. No agenda, no goals, no pressure, no timed laps, just a couple of EZ-Ups and a cheap Weber grill brought out by the guys from K&N.

A total of 13 cars showed up and they represented an almost perfect random sample of where the sport compact movement stands at this moment in history. The cars ranged from fresh-off-the-showroom-floor to barely-saved-from-the-scrapper; forced induction was there on most cars, but not on all; some of the technology on display was cutting edge stuff, and other bits looked like they fell off the trailing edge back when Will Smith was still The Fresh Prince. The only word that manages to describe the collection is: diverse.

And that's just about the perfect word to describe the world of sport compacts today.

This decade has seen some sport compact trends grow while others have ebbed. But it's still a loony bin of creativity out there and the scope of the cars available to wrench on has grown absolutely insane. Today there's drifting, there's still some import drag racing, there's time attack, the 24 Hours of LeMons, NASA, and SCCA club racing, and a hundred other ways to get your car jones... er, jonesed.

And that's what makes today's world of sport compacts so unfathomably exciting: diversity. It's not a question of what everyone is doing now, it's up to you to decide what you want to do because there are plenty of other people already doing it. Don't want to futz with your car? That's OK too, since today you can walk into a dealer's showroom, pick up a new WRX STI, Civic Si, Mazdaspeed3, Lancer Evolution, or even a Cobalt SS and go kick some ass in an autocross that weekend. There's almost too much to choose from today. Except, of course, that in the sport compact world there's never such a thing as "too much."

So, we had a party to celebrate diversity. We had friends show up who are pushing 50 and youngsters who'd call an Intergra old school. And we were all there because, damn it, we still love cars.

Mark DiBella
1991 Mazda Miata
At 49, DiBella is old enough to have been old school back when old school was still new school. Currently he runs MD Automotive in Westminster, California, a shop that specializes in Honda, Acura, Mazda, and Toyota service, repair, and performance inflation. DiBella started his own business when his then-employer Oscar Jackson kinda/sorta retired a few years ago. In fact MD Automotive is housed in a building once used by Jackson.

With experience that goes back to the gray market importation of the mid-engine Renault 5 Turbo back in the '80s and working on the Jackson Racing CRX's that won two Escort Endurance Series championships way-back-when, DiBella has learned to take the long view on the sport compact scene and go for high-value returns on his investment.

"The car is a '91 Miata," he explains about the machine he brought out to Willow for SCC's anniversary fiesta, "but it has the drivetrain from a '95 Miata and some simple suspension stuff-Spax coilovers, cross-drilled brake rotors and Konig 15-inch wheels inside Nitto Neo Gen 205/50/15 tires. It's all inexpensive."

Going forward into the future, he sees big challenges ahead for the sport compact aftermarket. "With the emissions getting as tight as they are, and the cars getting smarter and smarter it's getting tough for companies to make parts that work," he said. "And that's not going to change for a while."