Jalopnik: Forklift

Fiat Gets Forked

Mark Arnold — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 16:45:00 EDT

What do you do with your little Fiat when you need to get rid of it? Sell it? Bring it to the junkyard? Jump it over a river? Take the body off and reattach it backwards? The hoonin' possibilities are endless. Well, in the UK you apparently just throw the car away. We can't help but think this is wasting a perfectly good LeMons racer. Though ditching a car this way probably does take advantage of a loophole in some sort of obscene car disposal tax law.
[YouTube]

Workhorse Engine of the Day: Mitsubishi Astron

Mike Bumbeck — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 14:30:00 EDT

From a distant galaxy of single overhead cam engines comes the Mitsubishi Astron series. The mighty Astron began life in 1972, and is still ticking away under the hoods of everything from Mitsubishi Starions to the panoply of Chrysler K-Car variants. In the beginning, the Flying Sikh himself pummeled an Astron equipped original Lancer to numerous rally victories. Patented silent shaft technology canceled out harmonics as the engine grew in displacement from 1.8 to 2.6 liters of four pot fury. The last production car to pack the Astron was either the the 1991 Pajero or the 1990 Starion, but only if not counting the diesel version of the Astron - which motored on with turbo until 1993 amid Galants. 21 years of Astron! In sourcing a new cylinder head sans jet valves for one of the two 2.6L G54B turbo variants of the Astron in our garage we learned that the 'ol G54B aspirated on propane with propane accessories serves in many forklifts to this day. The odd marriage of Mopar, Mitsubishi, and K-Car station wagons also led to some innovative badging - as seen in the bonus pic after the jump. [Mitsubishi Astron]

Forklift Midget Action

Davey G. Johnson — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 18:00:00 EDT

Rick Fork is my hero at the moment. So I typed "Fork Car" into Google Images. This is what I came up with. It is suitably rad and apparently photographed by a man named Steve Hardin, but maybe I would be happier if I typed "car with many forks stuck into/out of it." But I will not, as I am insecure and will come up with a result I will not be happy with. And frankly, I couldn't bear it. So this will have to do. I think, though, I could be happy spending a day picking up and putting down small racing vehicles with a forklift. It also brings a question to mind: Why is it that it's only PC to use the word "midget" when referring to cars or pornography involving little people? – Davey G. Johnson

Rumble at the Fort Wayne Expo Center December 27-28, 2002 [Steve Hardin's World of Sprint Cars and Midgets]

Related:
Salt Flats Monster: '69 Barracuda LSR Car [Internal]