Inside The Luxury Big Rig That Carries The Entire Tonka Truck Racing Team
There's a magical place where grown men still play with Tonka toys. That's Myan Spaccarelli's ranch; with a barn full of tools, endless acres to screw around on, and life-size versions of your favorite childhood sandbox trucks. Next week we'll show you around 'em all, but let's check out the biggest right now!
Spaccarelli races what's called a Pro-2 truck. Those are scratch-built rear-wheel-drive racing frames with 700 to 900 horsepower NASCAR-style engines and body-cladding to look like pickup trucks.
Running with Tonka as his main sponsor, Spaccarelli mainly competes in the Lucas Oil Off-Road Racing Series at "shortcourse events." As the name implies, these are tight, twisty, bumpy, dirty messes that the whole field of competitors slide and literally fly around for laps on laps.
Think of a motocross course with slightly smaller jumps. Or if you've ever played Mario Kart 64; "Wario Stadium."
This level of competition is punishing, and Spaccarelli's Tonka truck gets the crap kicked out if it at every race, even if he's coming in first. So the Tonka Racing crew has to pack their entire fabrication and repair shop up into this glorious big rig and be able to swap everything from bodies to bumpers to engines and transmissions with the tools they can carry.
Once you get a close look at this thing, you'll realize they can carry a heck of a lot.
Spaccarelli and his crew roll from race to race in this black and chrome behemoth they bought off a NASCAR crew that outgrew it.
But this 90's Kenworth is just 500,000 miles young and had all kinds of amazing goodies onboard. Come check it out with us!
Andrew P. Collins is Jalopnik's off-road and adventure guy. Shoot him an email at andrew@jalopnik.com or hit him up on Twitter @andr3wcollins to talk trucks.