For the 2017 Baja 1000, which is being recognized as the 50th anniversary of the event, race sanctioning body SCORE has created two new classes for period-correct race vehicles built before 1992. It’s going to be old-school cool fender-to-fender all the way down to La Paz, baby!
Baja racing is a nuanced spur of motorsports that combines adventure travel, extreme endurance, and hundreds of miles of high-stakes problem-solving down Mexico’s western peninsula. Here’s a look at what the Baja 500 really looks like from a small family team’s perspective.
On June 20, Bob “Weatherman” Steinberger passed away after a long battle with cancer. To off-road racers, Weatherman was an arbiter, a messenger, and sometimes, a life saver. But even more than that; Weatherman invented backcountry communication decades before cell phones and GPS, and helped make some of the coolest…
Nope, it’s not a “Colorado-inspired” body kit wrapped around a space frame. Well, actually, it pretty much is at this point. But this seriously extreme off-road truck started life as a regular-ass crew cab Chevy Colorado.
Racing cars in Mexico is fun, it’s exciting, it’s hard work, and sometimes it burns so badly it’ll leave you sobbing in a bathroom begging for death. And I’m not talking about the Montezuma’s Revenge—or at least not just that.
Good morning race fans! The 2017 Baja 500 is underway, motorcycles are storming the course and the fastest four-wheeled vehicles will be following close behind soon enough. We leave the starting line around mid-day. Meanwhile, here’s where to keep tabs on the action live.
“The BajaLite is a good entry-level race truck,” they said. “You’ll have fun,” they said. Then somebody went and signed us, the website you are currently reading, Jalopnik, into the 2017 Baja 500 in the same class as Honda and Toyota’s freaking factory teams. So, you know, hope they’re ready to be run down by a few…
“Can’t believe, after the miserable suckstorm we went through in ’15–” CLANK “you wanted to come–” CRUNCH “racing again,” Baja driver Ron Stobaugh said between thwacks to his Jeep’s undercarriage. We were crawling and clawing through our Baja 500 pre-run, where we learned one thing: we’re forked.
The 2017 NORRA Mexican 1000 is upon us, and that means a mob of wacky off-road vehicles are getting ready to race through about 1,000 miles of Baja sand and another couple thousand cans of light beer. Ever think you’d see a Vanagon, lifted Porsches and an ancient Power Wagon go fender-to-fender?
The VW Bus is a timeless staple of off-road racing in Mexico. It’s– wait, what? Bus? No, that can’t be right. Oh. Oh mercy. It’s a bus alright. Looks like, 50 years after its first run, the Mexican 1000 is still the best place for lunatics to become legends.
Dust2Glory is no CGI-saturated bleached-toothed Hollywood “car movie.” It’s a slice of life. A life that revolves around friends, family and hauling ass through the open desert down south. And hey, the first trailer’s finally out.
It’s midnight and it’s freezing. The tiny industrial park is dead and empty, save for one open garage bay. Bathed in harsh lights and fatigued by 48 hours of continuous work, six guys are dirty and bloody trying to turn the husk of an old BMW into a race car. They don’t have enough time. They don’t have the right…
Next month over 120 cars, trucks and motorcycles are leaving from Los Angeles to start the inaugural “Baja 4000.” Not a race, but almost 3,000 miles of adventure driving and little challenges this band of lunatics will try to complete in 10 days.
We’ve heard a lot about the 2017 Ford Raptor “optimizing itself” for different driving situations. This week between canyon carving and sand-sliding sessions, we sat down with an engineer to find out what’s really going on when you push this truck’s magic buttons.
BJ Baldwin is one of the most elite off-road racers driving right now. When he makes a mistake, things blow up big time, as you can see from the way his truck looks “after hitting a rock the size of a car” at 75 mph in the 2016 Baja 1000.
We’re all stoked to see what the 2017 Ford Raptor is really made of. So is Ford, which just put a close-to-stock truck through the infamous Baja 1000 off-road race. It finished with less than 52 seconds to spare, then immediately got driven another 400 miles to its home base in Arizona.
Professional lunatic Bill Caswell was still trying to finish his Mad Maxian BMW E30 when I wrote this, less than 24 hours from the start of the 2016 Baja 1000. That’s why I wasn’t expecting to make it over the border with him, but there I was, preparing to do just that. Here’s how to be ready if you get the same phone…
Thousands of rich rednecks, uh, I mean, “off-road enthusiasts” are descending on Mexico’s Baja peninsula this week for the 49th annual Baja 1000– a race of epic proportions in a beautiful setting featuring readily available tacos. Here’s how to check it out, and who to pay attention to if you’re a new spectator.
The 2016 Baja 1000 race will go green for four-wheeled vehicles at about 10:30 a.m. PST on Friday, November 18. I’m not going to disclose exactly what time I’m writing this on the 17th, but if Bill Caswell actually gets his insane old BMW into the race it’s going to be an epic story before we even hit the course.
Ex-finance guy turned motorsports hero Bill Caswell rose to fame in 2010 by living so many of our dreams: dragging a $500 BMW from the bowels of Craigslist and racing it in big-league rallies. Now he’s back with even bigger ambitions, and somehow, still, remarkably unprepared. And I’m along for the ride this time.
