"Sveinbjörn Halldórsson, a 44-year-old real-estate agent from Reykjavík, drives a Chevy S10 pickup with a souped-up engine, 44-inch tires with spikes, and four kinds of radios and phones on the dashboard. Filling up the truck's 240-liter tank (about 63 gallons) for the weekend costs him nearly $500, with gas costing $7.84 a gallon. He rolls with one of many so-called gangs on Iceland's highly competitive 4x4 off-road vehicle scene...A once-booming real-estate market is now in free-fall. Last year, Mr. Halldórsson's company sold 30 apartments a month. Last month it sold three. "When the phone rings now, the noise shocks everybody," he says. As his payments balloon and times get tougher, he's having to skip jeep trips, including his gang's annual five-day glacier expedition later this month."

Samúel "Wolf" Thór Gudjónsson, a lanky 21-year-old electrician with long blond rocker's hair, joined with dozens of other jeep fans earlier this month to protest climbing fuel prices, blocking oil companies' depots. Others drove their jeeps through the city's streets at 5 miles an hour to demand cuts in fuel taxes.

Demonstrations are rare in stoical Iceland, a country of only 300,000 people. But the threat to jeep habits is just too much. Alfred "Spotti" Bergisson, a 26-year-old plumber who drives a beefed-up Toyota Land Cruiser, is willing to fight for his right to party. "I just want to go where I want to go," he says. "I get energy in the mountains. I think there."

[YouTube]

And, since today's PCH Mustang was of an earlier vintage than the one above, let's hear a somewhat slower and much cheaper- but still pretty damn cool- Mustang roaring around the track at Thunderhill. Yeah, pushrod V8s are obsolete, but we don't care!

Last night, a member of the Vortex for all things VW supposedly gave his beloved Audi A8 over to a Brooklyn valet attendant, but instead of getting the car back in the condition he left it, he found it totaled. Currently, details are slim — and completely unverifiable — but according to the member of the forum, the big German luxo sedan was being raced for about 45min prior to biting the sidewalk and sealing its fate. [via VWvortex member icuMk2]

We're going to sort the teams by car number; everyone who managed to get a car out on the track should be here. We've tried to provide links to team-supplied images and video whenever possible. Enjoy!

Paris isn't Alameda and though there are some upsides to being here, it isn't really a car city and the vehicles we see are painfully bland. I don't know if this is worthy of your attention but I saw this Renault 4TL in the street the other day. It might not be as famous as the Citroen 2CV but it was actually the most successful car in French history (over 8 million units over 30 years). It is, among other things the most imported car in german history, and the first mass produced FWD hatchback. But the reason I'm sending you this one is that it still has the decals from the " Coupe de France Renault Cross Elf" which was a racing series held on dirt tracks with these cars (and their slightly tuned 782cc engine). Renault sold the cars and safety parts for cheap, preferably to young drivers, only a small number of mods were allowed and the winner of the season (10 to 12 races) would win a Renault 5LS (not the dreaded Lecar...) ready to compete in the Gordini Cup.
So this poor thing was hooned by irresponsible Frenchmen around dirt tracks, and now it lives in snobbish, fashion-obsessed Paris. I hope you enjoy the kitsch race styling details. And thanks again for the Poster Child post.


When I pointed out to Franzouse that I always thought the Mini was the first mass-produced FWD hatchback, he came back with a response that oughta get COTD consideration, even though it wasn't a comment in a post:
Damn nationalistic French automotive encyclopedia!

Yes, it's a Volvo! An '84 244 (aka DL), to be exact. How can you turn down a running $100 car that's already equipped with four-wheel discs, rack-and-pinion steering, plenty of room for a cage... and a spacious engine compartment?


Over the weekend, I met up with team member Dave (a fixture in the East Bay street-rod scene and builder of numerous Altamont-racing enduro cars) and we took his car trailer over to Milpitas to pick up our new powder-blue Swedish bomber.


Brendan showed up later in his '70 Holden Ute, to help with the carnage careful dismantling of the Volvo.


But before we picked up the prybars and sledgehammers, we all had to ogle some of Dave's projects, including this legendary machine: the Mark Mist '36 Ford show car. Dave is restoring this beauty to its early-60s glory (and, yes, I'll do a feature on this car later on- stay tuned).


Then it was out to the Volvo, to begin the radical weight-loss program. The factory shipping weight on the 4-door '84 DL was under 3,000 pounds, but that's still too heavy.


All the aluminum and steel we remove is going to be sold as scrap to a metal-recycling yard- hey, it won't be much, but every dime we can recoup from selling unnecessary stuff off the car can be added to the $500 ceiling (it says so right in the rule book).


The interior is in pretty good shape, so we'll sell what we can on Craigslist; all the switches, instruments, mirrrors, etc., are going up on eBay.


Even change from under the carpets gets added to the $500 limit; the car ultimately yielded $1.23 in coins (plus one Canadian penny and a Malibu Grand Prix video-game token).


Lots of stuff goes right in the trash, of course.


But how about the other team members? Well, there's the San Pedro Mt. Washington-based Loverman, of course; he'll be heading up to NorCal to shred his knuckles on some Göteborg tin during the next few months.


And, just because you can't have too many journalists on the team, we've suckered persuaded Jack Baruth (aka ViergangFuchs) into coming out to Californy to drive for us. Jack drives pretty good, in addition to being a Doctor of Automotive Journalism.


I didn't manage to get a good photo of team member Wayne, but since he owns a building-demolition company I figured a shot of the Sands imploding would establish the appropriate air of hoonage. Wayne has been building and racing dirt-track cars for quite a while, and we nearly had to physically restrain him from grabbing the cutting torch before the Volvo was even off the trailer.


Oh yes, one last detail: You know how the Volvo DL is underpowered? Welcome to Dave's Island of Misfit Engines, including a loose-but-serviceable Ford 302. Hey, anyone want to buy a Volvo engine and transmission?

We'll have in-depth coverage of many of these vehicles in the days to come; for now, we'll just provide the occasional note and/or hyperlink the names of those teams we've covered already.

They managed to pick up five very thrashed 280Zs and 280ZXs for $500, including one that had already been used as a race car and had a cage ready to go.


So they built a universal electrical control panel that they can just switch- along with the cage- between cars as they destroy them. Smart!


Then there was a little mishap involving a Neon, the upshot of which was one Neon with the trunklid bashed into the rear seat area and one Z with the front end completely destroyed. Radiator, water pump- all of it crushed. Good thing they brought along a bunch of spares from the other four cars!


The fenders and hood won't be on the car for today's race, ensuring an extra-mean appearance.