Here at Jalopnik we spent years crapping on car television for being generally awful. That’s because deep down, we always thought we could maybe do it better. Strap yourself in, because you’re about to watch our first attempt at doing exactly that: Car vs. America.
In a moment it was all silenced. The screaming of the fans packing the stadium. The 14 cars all tearing into a collision course with me. The passenger airbag blew as another skidplate car made contact and it finally snapped me into realizing what I’d gotten myself into.
A reminder! Car vs. America, the TV show that we worked so very hard to make good for you, premieres tomorrow night!
Ask Jalopnik editors Michael Ballaban and Raphael Orlove to drop some hot blog fire and they’ll do it in an instant. With gusto. But ask them to become skid-plate racers in one day? They’ll need some experts to coax (or kick) them in the right direction. You’ll be able to see how it turns out this week on Car vs.…
Jalopnik editors Michael Ballaban and Raphael Orlove: you won’t find tougher, more skilled, more experienced Real Car-Driving Men® than these guys. But one thing they’ve never done is put skid plates on old family sedans to go up against the toughest locals at Winston-Salem’s Bowman Gray Stadium. You get to see it go…
Mike Ballaban is Jalopnik’s Deputy Editor. Raphael Orlove is Jalopnik’s Features Editor. Each owns a decrepit European car and has driven a Dakar race truck. Together, they star in Car vs. America—Jalopnik’s first real-deal television program. It premieres on Fusion TV on Oct. 18.
Cars: what are they? Are they just rooms we control with our hands and our feet and our hearts, or are they something... more? Furthermore, America: is it just an ideal we will never truly live up to, or an actual place, sandwiched between Canada and Mexico? No one can say. But if there’s anything that will have…
“SEND IT!” the kid next to me screamed into the night, as three cop cars tore through the intersection where a slammed Volkswagen had done a front-wheel drive burnout only moments before. A police helicopter buzzed over the bay nearby. H2Oi was technically cancelled this year. But 78 arrests, 2,735 calls to police …
Listen: we get it. We know you have lots of options when it comes to TV these days. Some might even say there are too many shows! But we at Jalopnik know you are craving a car show that’s in touch with real, grassroots car culture, and Car vs. America aims to be that show.
The most ticketed car show in America, also known as H2Oi, is officially canceled. Done. Finito. But that doesn’t matter. We’re in Ocean City, Maryland, with the crew of Car vs. America, and it’s absolutely crawling with stanced cars. (And blog editors-turned-television-presenters.)
They say young people don’t care about cars anymore. They say the culture is dying. They say human driving doesn’t even have a future. You, the Jalopnik community of readers, know that isn’t true. You also know the last place to look for modern car culture is the vast wasteland that is television. But we think we can…
