I don't understand what your point is in all of this... So Joe Blow Sixpack with 2 left feet and a total lack-of-knack in the coordination department can't drive ANYTHING worth a damn... What does that have to do with the cars??
In my decent breadth of experience, and having owned and raced a laundry list of factory performance vehicles since obtaining my license in '83, I find that...
1. Magazine 1/4 mile performance times DO REFLECT what the "average driver" could expect to achieve after several passes on a decent track at a proper facility (i.e. not Billy Bob's raceway up in the hills, with gravel on the launch pad and a curve in the middle of it....).
2. As-such, I've never owned a new car that I didn't go out to my local drag-strip bone-stock (I ALWAYS base-lined my cars at the strip totally-stock prior to doing any mods) and better all of the published magazine times. I've never seen a magazine time that I couldn't beat, bone-stock, by a tenth or two.
3. I've had a ton of friends through the years who have taken their new cars out to see what they could do. Most of them, by the end of the night, came away within a 10th faster or slower of the aggregate magazine times. In short, the times were reasonably achievable.
4. And then I've had some inept friends, and of course I've witnessed hundreds of people I didn't know making passes in stock new cars, that just couldn't run a good time if you shot them out of a cannon. I do not consider these folks to be "average drivers", but I'm certain that they CONSIDER themselves as-such.
No, I'm afraid that if you take a stock car to the track, any car, with decent conditions (80 degrees or cooler, 70% humidity or better), an average driver should be able to get damn close, if not eclipse, the numbers that the magazines put up. Magazines intentionally do not speed-shift. Every time I've read an article where they explain their testing procedures, they ALL state that they run the acceleration tests in a manner that can be consistently duplicated in the interest of consistency on their part, in the interest of standardization of testing on their part (so that when you're comparing performance results between two different cars from two different issues, you're hopefully comparing apples-to-apples within a reasonable range..), and in the interest that they publish times that the "average driver could reasonably expect to realize should they purchase said vehicle".
In short, if a magazine runs 11.7 @ 126 in a new Z06, and you see someone at the track on a crisp night that can't break into the 11's with his, you're looking at two options:
1. the car's a dud
2. the driver's a dud
I remember the first time I tracked my '93 Corvette 6-speed, I won fast-trophy that night on a 13.29 dial. Another guy there that night with the exact same car ('93 6-speed) couldn't break into the damn 13's whatsoever, and kept asking me what I had done to my car (ummm, drive it correctly??
)
I also remember the first time I baselined my '96 Mystic Cobra, there was a guy there with MT's on a white '96 Cobra who's best time of the night was just north of 14.60. After two practice runs, I settled into consistant 13.80's on my stock P.O.S. B.F. Goodjunks...
Sorry for the rambling, but average drivers SHOULD be able to come close to magazine times..