Time Attack Civic vs Time Attack 350Z

At first blush, this doesn’t seem fair. They didn’t give the Z enough lengths.

V8 powered and RWD, sounds like a fun time, and a fast car, but Honda heads have said they were faster for years. Now, they have their chance to prove it between two time attack machines. Can Will Au Yeung’s Vibrant Performance Honda Civic Si really beat Savanna Little’s Enjuku Racing Nissan 350Z with an LS-swap? It’s time to put pro drivers Matt Powers and Geoff Stoneback behind the wheel to find out.

We’ve covered Will’s Civic before, and since that feature, it has only gotten faster. However, for the GridLife event he was competing in, the sequential shifted transmission had decided to let go. A traditional H-pattern went back in so he could continue to compete. However, before that, Matt Powers from Nitto Tires and Formula Drift Veteran drove it against Enjuku Racing’s Nissan 350Z with the LS3-based LS376 V8 with fellow Formula Drift Veteran Geoff Stoneback behind the wheel. Here’s a little inside baseball on these two cars: they aren’t in the same class when running in Global Time Attack. Savanna’s 350Z runs in the Limited Rear Wheel Drive class while Will’s car runs in the Unlimited Front Wheel Drive class.

So, not an apples-to-apples comparison. However, it does bring about the classic argument of which is faster: front-wheel drive or rear-wheel drive? Turns out, FWD wins the event on this one after Stoneback let the car drift in turn three. He just couldn’t recover the lost time from it. However, with Savanna behind the wheel, it turned in a 1:45.646 and was the tenth fastest overall for the GridLife event. In comparison, when Will’s car was healthy it turned in a 1:28.296. They then came back, smashing the production-based car record for Gingerman with a 1:27.534 at Honda Meet, just a few weeks later. Now the Civic is sitting at a port in Australia, waiting to be unloaded for the biggest challenge of all: World Time Attack Challenge.