To date, my best quarter-mile time is a 13.61 second pass, running a 2006 Ford Mustang GT in the cool nighttime air at the now-dead Speedworld strip in Arizona. Not too bad for a mostly stock Mustang that only had a tuner on it at the time, and that night walked some pretty good cars, including a 370Z, a CTS-V, a Honda Civic that turned out to be an 11-second capable machine, and a well-warmed up four-eye Fox Mustang. (Update: since this story was written, my personal best is now [email protected] MPH in Angry Grandpa at ATCO Raceway in New Jersey. -ed) If any of those cars had taken the win light from me, I wouldn’t have been mad. Had Martin Lotsburg’s Ford Escort GT been the car to wax me, I would have been a barely-contaned headcase. I would want to know the whys and hows on how big the turbo has to be to propel 1.8 liters of Mazda-sourced four-banger to mid-13 second quarter mile times. If this setup is durable enough for everyday driving and can actually pull decent fuel economy numbers when it’s not on boost, this would make a killer “Pro Commuter” build…13 seconds used to be ballsy street car territory for a V8-powered anything, but from a 1990s Ford Escort, it’s like lighting a single firecracker and getting an explosion that leaves a six-foot crater in the ground…the only thought in anybody’s mind is, “…wasn’t expecting that.”