A few weeks ago I brought you a quick taste of Tanner Foust’s new video where he drifts around Mulholland Drive in California. For those of you who don’t know about this wicked road it follows the ridge line of the Santa Monica mountains. I’ve been here and have driven it with both two and four wheeled vehicles and to say that this stretch of curves is EPIC would be an understatement. It’s tight, twisty and technical and if you don’t know your way around you could do some serious harm to yourself. Tanner Foust is a stunt driver, TV host and Formula Drift champion and when the opportunity came up to drift Mulholland I can only imagine that he was as giddy as a 4 year old boy. Check out the above video and enjoy.
Hooniverse recently posted this spectacular video of an ’80s Audi SportQuattro making mincemeat of its tires and screaming its turbocharged head off. It reminded me of another video of a homebrew mini monster truck spraying a herd of Harleys with molten rubber.
At first glance it seems like the vehicles have nothing in common. The Audi is a tour de force of Teutonic technology. The monster truck is a homemade carnival ride. The Quattro has an über turbo with a waste gate that spits like a cobra. The mini monster has a supercharged big-block Ford V8 that’s so wicked it refuses to shut off.
But these beasts have much in common. Both have 600-ish horsepower. Both can make all four tires go critical in the blink of an eye. Both seem to have sprung fully formed from the fantasy of a 12-year-old boy.
So the question is: Which performs the better burnout?
If you have ever wondered what it would be like to be “Bond, James Bond”, then you are far from being alone. Every man who as ever watched a James Bond movie has walked out of the movie theater or maybe just got up off the couch thinking, “Damn I wish i was that cool.” And while we all think we know what it takes to be agent 007, its not just the Golden Gun or unbelievable swagger. You must also have “cojones” the size of basketballs. No one in their right mind can tell themselves that they would perform a stunt like this car barrel roll seen in the movie “The Man with the Golden Gun.” The amazing thing is at the very end of this clip you see Bond’s face and it looks like the flip did not phase him in the slightest. And until we are willing to repeat that feat, we can all keep dreaming.
“It’s got a cop motor, a 440-cubic-inch plant. It’s got cop tires, cop suspension, cop shocks. It’s a model made before catalytic converters so it’ll run good on regular gas”
Believe it or not this car chase was one of the last really gritty car chases made. Oddly enough, this chase was actually supposed to be a spoof of what a great car chase should be and ended up being one of the best ones ever filmed. It also destroyed over 60 used police cars and made the “Bluesmobile” a movie icon.
Decorated rally racer and DC Shoe co-founder Ken Block, one of Subaru’s most valuable assets in catapulting them to the height of their popularity, is now working for Ford. Famous for his stunning X-Games performances and Gymkhana viral videos (featured after the jump), Block’s legacy within the motorsports circuit is well known by even the most casual of fans and Ford has essentially landed themselves the golden marketing ticket.
Beyond the scores of devout broskies that worship in his wake, Block will also bring to Ford the street cred of a second-generation fanboy. “I am stoked to be rallying in a Ford. They are an impressive force in the sport,” said Ken Block. “From the days of the 1970s Escorts to the Group B RS200 to the modern-day Focus and now the Fiesta, Ford just does an excellent job at rally and I couldn’t be happier to now be part of this amazing heritage. Not to mention my dad would be proud. He was a dedicated Ford guy.”
In an effort to stay one step ahead of the media blitz launched by fellow Detroit automaker, GM, Ford has launched a new marketing campaign involving the 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid, relatively unknown comedian Mark Malkoff, and a 28-day road trip. It sounds like the campy plot to a Nickelodeon movie, but Ford’s goal is not to see how many painful eye rolls it can elicit in one sitting but rather to showcase the Fusion Hybrid’s astounding fuel efficiency. According to the press release, Malkoff’s lofty goal is to see how many mayors east of the Mississippi he can convince to hand over the keys to their cities while using Ford’s hand-free SYNC system to keep all 10 of his fans updated on his progress via Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr.
“Mark came to us with the idea, and we loved it,” said Jeffrey Eggen, manager, Ford Car Experiential Marketing. “It fits in well with our strategy to raise awareness of our new Ford vehicles by getting real customers behind the wheel and letting them tell their own story.”
The new European Ford Focus has long been the envy of any Blue Oval fan worth his or her salt, and there’s news out of Essex that is liable to make Stateside Ford nuts curse their luck again. At a British MPG competition, the apparently stock Focus RS was manned by an automotive journalist, and returned fuel economy numbers that are rather astonishing. The 163 MPH capable Ford Focus RS, that nimble hot hatch that is nothing like our ancient creaky joke of a car, can return a remarkable 38.5 miles per imperial gallon if you lay off the fun pedal. That’s 31.6 MPG in our smaller American gallons, but it’s still nothing to shake a crumpet at. Press release and more after the jump.
Ever wondered how fast a hearse, with a casket and body inside, would run the quarter mile? If you were watching Jerome Miller’s funeral procession, you’d have the answer. Miller was an avid, possibly fanatic drag racing fan from Kenosha, Wisconsin, who came up street dragging and ended up running an AMC dragger until around 1993, when his eyesight wouldn’t allow it anymore.
By now, if you’re a filthy Western fan of rallying you’ve probably already heard the news that Discovery HD Theater is bringing the FIA World Rally Championship stateside for our viewing pleasure. Scheduled to kick off Sunday October 4 with a 6-hour “World Rally Madness” marathon, Discovery HD Theater will air footage from each new rally every Sunday night at 8 PM ET from October 11 through December 20, 2009. The bad news? Despite the slightly misleading nomenclature, Discovery HD Theater is not the same Discovery Channel you tune into every night for your Dirty Jobs fix, and unless you shelled out an extra arm and a leg for the Super Channel Blowout Bonanza package, you probably don’t get it. Thanks to Al Gore, though, it doesn’t matter.
