American Togue 3

The Horse Thief Mile is the newest circuit at the Willow Springs Motorsports Park in Rosamond, Calif., and literally is carved into the hillside overlooking the complex's other tracks. For a mile-long course, relatively short by many standards, it's packed with an abundance of challenges: 11 turns, many fairly tight and stomach-turning elevation changes. When regulars to Willow Springs first saw the narrow, snaking tarmac being laid down, no one could believe it was for cars.

Of course we now know better, in small part because of the "American Touge" series of DVDs produced by Hot Version International, an offshoot of JDM video purveyors Best Motoring. The Mile was the circuit of choice for the first 2 chapters, and on December 20th hosted the third and most recent entry.

For the uninitiated, the first "American Touge" ran as a segment in HVI's volume 3 in 2004, and its original objective was to test the overall performance of some prominent US-tuned Japanese cars in a touge (pronounced "toe-ge") environment, that is, on winding, mountainous roads. The team battle format pitted 2 cars against each other, with one leading while the other followed. At its conclusion, the Comptech NSX was crowned the first American Touge Monster, with special props going to Top Setup in Chicago, which brought out an EG Civic hatchback that really wowed the judges (speaking of, Charlie from TS, you still owe us a story).

AT1 generated much interest, so for number 2, producers dedicated an entire 90-minute video to the contest. The open casting call was whittled down to 33 vehicles, of which the XS Engineering Skyline took the top honor of Touge Monster.

For the third installment, Hot Version returned to a scaled back variety of the event, inviting just 8 cars. As luck would have it, though, 5 were unable to make the taping for an assortment of reasons. In full stopgap mode, the crew was able to cobble together a couple more late entries for the contest, and the final field looked like this:

* HASport's CRX - this was HASport's third invite, and second time campaigning the supercharged, K20 swapped Rex* Prototype Racing's Lotus Elise - another K20 swap, a JDM ITR mill* Cosworth/Dyno-comp's Subaru WRX STI* JIC-Magic's Porsche 996* Muellerized's Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution - these last 2 were the late comers

Additionally, Charlie from Top Setup made the haul yet again, but sans the famed hatch this time. He accompanied the owner of a del Sol, ostensibly another TS car, that didn't appear to make the competition but still got track time.

Of course the regular on-air talent was in attendance, namely drivers Keiichi Tsuchiya and Yasuyuki Kazama, as was lovely umbrella girl Kazumi Kondo, plus American model and wrestler Bobbi Billard, we're guessing for some added appeal. In addition to the vehicles and pseudo-celebs, about 100 spectators came out, including the HT staff.

This being another media outlet's event, we didn't get a whole lot of special behind-the-scenes access, and indeed had to absorb the spectacle from behind a fence just like the rest of the audience. We were able to see plenty from our vantage point, however, and Brian Gillespie from HASport and Joe McCarthy from Prototype helped us piece together a picture of how the judging went.