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.

For those of you old enough to remember Ms. Pac-Man, the realism with which today’s video games are delivered may almost seem surreal. Such is the case with the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG pictured above (and below, after the jump), which is set to take center stage in the new Gran Turismo 5 when it hits stores in a few months. Rendered by the pros at Polyphony Digital, the GT5 SLS AMG is a dead ringer for the production version scheduled to debut in mid-2010 and can be had for thousands of dollars less than the original. Of course, the babes you’ll attract will be limited to whatever can be found skulking around the chat rooms but hey,you know what they say, you can’t have your cake and eat it too…

As much as the drifting crowd would like to think their four-wheeled acrobatics will incite a new renaissance in grass-roots racing, conjure up the ghost of Steve McQueen, and cure cancer, in actuality it is the automotive equivalent of synchronized swimming. Still, even the most cynical among us has to admit that repeatedly maintaining control of a couple thousand lbs of machinery through excessively oversteered corners deserves our respect on some level.

One of the reigning kings of this (let’s call it) sport, is Vaughn Gittin Jr., who if you didn’t know, is the new poster child for Ford’s campaign at making the 2010 Mustang a legitimate drift contender. As part of that effort, they have released six documentary-style webisodes that chronicle his recent tour of the drifting motherland: Japan.

Is it karma? A former Canadian government prosecutor, Micheal Bryant, was charged on Tuesday for killing a bike messenger during a road rage incident. While that is horrible and tragic, Bryant was also known for aggressively pushing for stronger traffic safety laws, including quite controversially in 2007 giving local Ontario cops the ability to seize and crush any vehicle modified for racing even if no charges were filed against the owner. That’s right, that AEM cold-air intake would have been enough for Bryant’s goons to crush your car. That made it way more insane than California’s controversial law about crushing street racers. Make the jump for more details on the highly ironic road rage incident that lead to Bryant’s arrest.

TRD Supercharged 2008 Toyota Tundra

Embracing the philosophy that superchargers possess the greatest potential for increasing horsepower in their stock Toyota engines, Toyota Racing Development (TRD) provides a range of supercharger units for Scion, Toyota and Lexus cars, none more impressive than that applied to the Toyota Tundra’s 5.7-liter V8 pictured above. The result? 504 horsepower and 550 pounds feet of torque.

How do you feel about heavily boosted J-tin cruising from apex to apex in full-on opposite-lock four-wheel-drift? If you’re anything like us, you are sort of transfixed. You don’t even have to like drifting to appreciate the cars and the extreme skill needed to whip them around a track not just adequately, but with style too. There are a lot of specialist sites catering to very specific car fetishes (brown Lincoln Continentals? Rolled-over donks?), but Noriyaro is where I go to get my JDM drift fix. If you don’t like the idea of 1,000 HP Supras banging against the rev limiter, then best not jump over to his site.

Koenigsegg CCR

From Wikipedia:

“During its review of the CCR’s successor, the CCX, BBC television program Top Gear reported that the Koenigsegg CCR holds the fastest speeding ticket in the United States allegedly occured in May 2003 in Texas. It was supposedly 242mph (389 km/h) in a 75mph zone. The car was involved in the San Francisco to Miami Gumball 3000 Rally.”

That much I knew. But the rest of the story, if true, is easily twice as ludicrous.

2010 Ford Mustang GT

The original pony car has gone through a lot of changes in the 45 years that Ford has been producing it.  By and large, the majority of those years have been filled with both a stylish and sporty car that has made the Mustang one of the most popular cars ever (which is why it’s still around, of course).  Consequently, narrowing down a list of the best Mustang models of all-time is not easy, but in this compilation of the best Mustangs ever (followed in Part 2 by some of the worst), I present to you the five ’Stangs that are most deserving of the galloping pony badge. 

Now that we’ve covered the 2010 Hennessey HPE700 Camaro and feel as though we have sufficiently atoned for our sins of negligence, we bring to you the newest addition to the HPE stable: the 2010 Hennessey HPE550 Camaro. 200 horses less powerful and about $40,000 cheaper, the HPE550 Camaro bridges the gap between the factory SS and the HPE700, essentially taking the place of the now-cancelled Camaro Z28.

A stock SS at its core, Hennessey outfits the Camaro’s factory-fresh LS3 V8 with a Magnuson supercharger and a Corsa exhaust, boosting engine output to 562-horsepower and 557lb-ft of torque. Equipped with a less extensive version of the HPE700’s package, the HPE550 Camaro also comes with Hennessey’s exclusive Cam-Aero kit which includes a Hennessey graphics package, lightweight 20″ wheels, as well as a carbon fiber rear lip spoiler, rocker panels and front splitter. Now, thanks to the combination of the blown engine and a slick new speed suit, Hennessey claims the HPE550 Camaro can make the sprint from 0-60 mph in a mere 3.9 seconds, and lap a quarter mile in a mere 11.9 seconds.

The exterior modifications might be minimal, but according to Ford, the 2010 Ford Shelby GT500 is a whole different beast under the hood. Ditching the single knock engine calibration system sensor for dual job, Ford’s SVT team was able to give the 2010 GT500’s supercharged 5.4L DOHC V8 a significant performance upgrade, boosting engine output to 540 horsepower and 510 lb-ft of torque. “Where you really feel the new power and torque is mid-range,” explained Kerry Baldori, chief functional engineer for Ford’s Special Vehicles Team. “The new Shelby GT500 produces more torque than the outgoing model at 3,000 rpm and never looks back.”

To enhance performance without sacrificing handling, Baldori and his team of SVT experts also took a torque wrench to the GT500’s 6-speed manual gearbox, replacing the twin-disk clutch with bigger, 250 mm copper and fiberglass disks. According to Baldori, this relatively minor change accounts for major improvements on the track. With clutch engagement noticeably smoother, the 2010 Shelby GT500 is now able to tear out of the starting gate with graceful ease and accelerate to 0-60mph time of 4.3s (0-100 in 9.4 seconds). Impressively enough, the improvements to its track-worthiness did not adversely affect its fuel economy, and the 2010 Shelby GT500 actually received a 2mpg in fuel efficiency for 2010. A negligible difference, yet a difference just the same, Baldori summarized the appeal of the new racehorse, explaining, “These are all the attributes that customers want in an on-the-edge performance car, but we’ve also delivered a comfortable daily driver as well.”