The tiny racing truck tore back off into the night, and we were left looking at each other. Jams and Boothe had caught up to us, being chauffeured in a chase truck by another friend. They looked brain-dead; I recognized their exacerbation from the last time I ran this race. They’d be human again in a few days.
More than a decade ago, director Dana Brown gave us the quintessential Baja movie Dust To Glory. Today, you’ll still hear desert racers and rallyists tell you about how the film turned them on to motorsports. And tomorrow, you can catch the new version. In a real live megaplex theatre near you.
I get so freaking fired up about the Baja 1000 every year because it’s the perfect beautiful blend of adventure, competition and amazing acts of automotive innovation. 2017 marks the race’s historic 50th anniversary, and live coverage should be better than ever.
Five months ago, my friends and I got worked over in Baja something fierce. Our car crashed and crushed our dreams as it collapsed onto the dust 45 miles into a 500 mile race. This week, we’re back with a vengeance.
The City of Ensenada is a vibrant port town a couple hours south of the U.S. border that derives a lot of commerce from two things: visiting cruise ship guests and off-road racers. This week, the city has apparently deepened its relationship with the racing community by setting up a Hollywood Stars style…
The 2017 Baja 1000 goes down next week. And this year being the 50th anniversary of the race, it’s going to be a big one: over 380 vehicles are already registered. Volkswagen will officially be on the starting line and in the mix, too. With a 1970 Beetle.
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…
