I like the principal behind that but the social aspect of the cruise on Saturday night is pretty cool too. Why not both?

All you can do is have a year cut off. and the guy with the most money wins. end of story.

Or just change the name to the Optima Ultimate Car, because lets be honest the top cars out there were barley street cars.

I am not crying spilt milk by any stretch, you have to pick your poison for sure.
it sure is fun to watch I must say.

Agree. Also... minimum tread depth check before returning to the street for the final cruise. Tires have to pass the same safety checks after racing as they did before the racing.

That just means that the judging criteria for the concourse and rally events need to be revised a little. More points could be given for full interior, stereo and AC, etc.

GOOD IDEA!! and make the cruse 100 miles, lots of open hwy in NV. Even some COOL back roads. If you went up 15 to Moapa/ Valley of fire around that loop to Overton and back the I15 it would be about 80-90 miles with slow winding country roads and freeway driving with 2-3 available gas stops. I mean hell if the Drag week guys can do 1500 miles. a prostock car could drive 15 miles if it had to.

Getting a little off topic from what Jody is asking here, but if its truly an ultimate street car then the following should also be included in the points-

dB and noise spectrum at cruise as well as NVH frequency analysis (how high, how much amplitude) make it a single blended score
Visibility out back and for lane changes
Cockpit temperature maintained in a certain range
clutch stiffness (again a wide rating that mostly penalizes outliers)
freeway rut tramline test
Would your mom ride in it ?
Ultimate level - would your mom drive it ?

Totally impractical of course but I kind of laugh everytime people start discussing race/street cars. Other than the "pre 1980 body style" thing I don't think there is a way to really separate muscle car styles from the modern cars.

The real question to start with is does Optima want an ultimate street car contest or a "cool looking cars compete on track" contest ?
I believe the first few years were the latter, and now it is turning into the former. I remember the first few years, it was mostly show cars that could run vs what's going on now. But as people have said, that's what made it cool, that was the real draw.

Optima
 

Now I know why Jody runs this board
He can post one question and get us going 4 pages in one day... love it

In Sf region of SCCA and also American autocross series they started
many years back two classes that are and maybe still unique to their
region... Open street prepared... anything goes but is has to have interior
and be registered.. they also took the old vettes out of the class and added Vintage prepared- spec tire- Nascar tires... these two things gave
some of these guys a place to run

First there needs to be some rules and I think Optima and SCCA are
trying to make things fair- not too many

I ran Optima last year and one of the best days of my life... I ran my
Pantera Saturday at Good guys (almost all the fast guys were in Vegas
except Mary) and placed 3 overall with 66 cars. but I was running
Dot road race tires.. more grip but harder to heat up with a car
that I cross once every year or two... my point is I had fun
and everyone loved the car.... everyone loves the old cars

Mary opened her hood and a group formed quickly.. look under the
car and the changes including the IRS are great

Our sport needs to have the old cars run but a guy like Kyle,Brent, etc also
need to show what they can do for the new cars otherwise they
may not be selling anything down the road...

Our sport is about improving what we have with the ways and means
we have.. someone is always going to be faster..... we all just want
to be faster than before and enjoy doing it

my two cents-Panteracer

I dunno... I personally like seeing how fast a street car can really be, and get particularly interested when a classic car can run against late model performance cars.

The former version of USCA you describe, which seemed to have been judged mostly subjectively based on what car looked the coolest, isn't really all that interesting to me. Just feels like an opportunity for people to pretend to race their cars.

If I can go out to a track day and run time trials in an open competition against everything from pumped up EVO and Z06, to Porsche GT2, and come within a margin of cars that are proven to be really fast out the box in my 47 year old Camaro, then I'll be stoked.

I don't need to win to have a blast - I just want to see what my car can do when judged objectively against newer cars.

My first objective when running in Optima or with the SCCA is just to have a place to drive my car like I built it to be driven in the first place.

Optima's format with the 5 events crammed into one weekend is a fantastic formula for this. The seat time one gets at these events is worth SO much more than screwing something up just to try to figure out a way to get your car closer to the top of the standings at the end of the day.

I didn't care or dream about being anywhere near the top of the running order on the big sheet. Did I look to see how I was doing against those guys...sure. I also watched them closely when I could to see if I as a driver could pick anything up from them. Heck, I lined up on the warm up laps behind Danny Popp and learned the line around the track at 60 mph.

Mainly though I looked around at the cars similarly built to mine and looked to see where I stacked up against them at each event. Everyone knows who everyone is, and what their cars are built like. Pick those that you think you can beat and go do it.

Being able to see myself running my car on TV...well that was just gravy on top of an already excellent weekend.

I add my 2 cents to this!