Take the most crowd-pleasing strains of modern automotive culture — rally cars, drifting, gymkhanas, the surreal settings of video games — splice them, wrap it all up for broadcast, and you have SPEED's newest effort: "Battle Cross."
The premise is straightforward: Two contestants face each other in a two-part competition: best time around a fiendishly complicated gymkhana course and points awarded in a drift-style hoonfest. The location is someplace other than a normal race track. Drift kings Sam Hubinette and Stephan Verdier judge the second portion.
The first episode pits 2011 Rally America champ David Higgins against BMX freestyle legend Dave Mirra, in identical Subaru STi rally cars, around courses set in and around an apocalyptic-looking steel mill. Two promo clips have been released: Dave Mirra's run at dusk is frenzied enough, but the David Higgins style portion above is one of the scariest things you'll watch all year, something like "The Blair Witch Project" meets "RoboCop" in an STi-powered blender.
The show premiers on November 17th at 10pm EST on SPEED, presumably introduced by several minutes' worth of legal disclaimers.