Sport Compact Performance 4
55 000 spectators over the three days
Four years isn't a long time in the grand scheme of things, but when it comes to the Canadian car show scene, they may as well be counting in dog years. For four years, Team SCP has pulled out all the stops to bring Montrealers the best show in town, and the fourth edition of Le Salon De L'auto Sport Compact Performance (SCP4) was no different. Whoever said that there was "no such thing as too much of a good thing" wasn't living in Montreal during the summer of 2003. With SCP impersonators coming out of the woodwork, the Team had no choice but to go wide-open throttle to remind the public who the number one production company in Canada is.
Instead of engaging in a childish pissing contest, Team SCP retaliated by putting on the best sport compact car show in Canadian history. The initial move was to secure the presence of the legendary Nissan Skyline GT-R as the show's feature vehicle; the next was to obtain a second Skyline for good measure. Everyone knows that hot girls travel in packs, and the same goes with the tuners. The owners of the two fabled Skylines brought some other hot rides with them, amongst them Jay Lugue's jet-black, JDM'd RX-7 and Joe Pistone's tuned S2000.
Speaking of quality, Boston's finest made the trip up from Beantown, with Team Imminence and Hi-Tek rolling hard and deep. Both crews took home serious hardware as John Sry took home the JDM Award while Santi Vee picked up the 2nd place trophy in the Toyota Wild Class and Kiet Hong won in the RSX Wild class with his Veilside/Turbo'd Acura, making Team Imminence three-for-three in the trophy hunt. Hi-Tek's first trip to Montreal was easily the most attention grabbing appearance of the show, as Nahn Nguyen took first in the Acura Integra 94+ Wild class, by far the most competitive category at SCP4. Nahn's trophy lined up nicely with Sean and Tommy Tran's awards for BMW Wild and Mercedes Wild, respectively. Not only did the three Hi-Tek members win their classes; Nguyen went on to win 4th place Best Of Show and Tommy Tran's Mercedes taking home the top prize, 2003 Best Of Show.
SCP4's ability to draw the hottest rides from across the East Coast by no means meant that the locals were shut out in the Show 'N' Shine. Peter K.'s 300ZX and the Silvia Twins from Automotion; Alex Hertzog and Greg Kataroyan continued their dominance of the Nissan classes. There was a time when the Girl Racer category existed to encourage participation by female tuners. Nathalie Mayer rendered the Girl Racer award obsolete by earning the top prize in one of the most hotly contested classes; Civic Hatch Mild.