The Lovefab Enviate: Prepping for the Peak
First off, I’d like to apologize for the delay with this post. I have been meaning to write this down for quite some time, but there was a whole lot of “real life” and “procrastination” happening between then and now. There have been a few details circulating about this year’s running of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb and the Lovefab Enviate, but the full story hasn’t been told until now.
If you missed Cody’s introduction to the project earlier this year, get brought up to speed by clicking here for the article.
Let's travel back to early June in Michigan, where a certain group of Lovefabbers were putting in the final push on the build for the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. Prior to this year I had never met Cody or any of the Lovefab crew in person before, so instead of being a bunch of awkward strangers when we met up in Colorado I made the eight hour drive to the shop for a ‘meet and greet’ while they worked on the car.
When I first walked into the shop it was a bit overwhelming, you are greeted immediately by a row of NSXs from across the country that have all been shipped to Lovefab for servicing or installation of one of their turbo setups. Tucked away in the back of the shop, surrounded by a controlled chaos of parts, tools, and packaging was the Enviate.
It was obvious there was much that needed to be done before this speed machine would have its chance to run up the peak. When people go above and beyond what is expected to do a job they say its giving 110%, well these guys had been running at 150% and been doing it every day for weeks on end. Working on customer cars during normal work hours, and then working on the Enviate until the wee hours of the morning. This writer couldn’t hang and actually passed out around 2AM while propped up against the cinderblock wall of the shop. Throughout this trip I would became well acquainted with how comfortable concrete and cinderblocks can really be when you’re running on fumes.
Even Tab was out in the shop pitching in by pulling dimensions off the bucks to send to the print shop for the vinyl wrap. (Spoiler alert, the print shop didn’t get the vinyl done in time for the race.)
These guys were definitely feeling the time crunch that they were facing, but there was never an air of panic or stress, only determination. I give these guys endless amounts of credit for the amount of work they put into this effort, and the diligence with which everything was completed. The Unlimited Class is typically dominated by the big teams with big budgets, but the Lovefab effort is seriously grass roots with a small team that put absolutely everything they had into a single shot. Seriously impressive!
