The little Mercedes-Benz 190E remains one of the most well-built cars of the modern age. Dependable? Certainly. Fast? Not so much, unless you spring for a Cosworth or something. That is, unless you drop a big-turbo LS into the front of it.
Remember when all of your problems could be solved by throwing down a banana peel, causing your opponent to comically spin out behind you, leading you to victory and temporarily broken friendships? Well that was just Mario Kart, and now you’re an adult, but could it still work in real life?
Here’s a good way to keep pesky bumps in the road from ruining your day: fit bigger tires! A smattering of take-off parts from desert racing teams doesn’t help, either. Bonus: you can even take your kid along for the ride in this sweet desert 2004 Chevy Silverado prerunner.
What is the key to happiness? I don’t know, but my best guess is that it would involve vintage rally cars, like the Group A Ford Escort Cosworth Ken Block plans to rally this season. I can’t get enough of this car, and now there’s footage of it blasting down stage roads. Really good footage.
One of the most entertaining drivers in Japan over the past few years has been Kazuya Taguchi, an Up Garage employee (kind of like super Autozone) who also runs in Formula Drift. Now he’s come stateside in this 4.1-liter R35 Nissan GT-R, which makes more power than you’d ever need.
The goofballs at Hoonigan turned an old Volvo V60 (RIP) into what is basically a full-sized Crazy Cart and proceeded to do the tightest donuts physically possible. Or maybe it’s more like a portable Disneyland teacup ride... deathtrap. Looks fun.
The mad scientists at Hoonigan are big fans of caster-wheeled Crazy Carts—the cool little toys made for drifting—but Crazy Carts just don’t have enough power. So, they’re taking a front-wheel-drive Volvo V70, hacking it in half and making their own giant Crazy Cart for lunatic grown-ups.
Everything is cooler in off-road trim—even the 420,666,069th Mazda Miata you’ve seen on the internet, or a Porsche 912 that was already cool. The masterminds behind the Gambler 500 recently dropped by Hoonigan for a good ol’ fashioned hoon-off, and needless to say, everybody wins in their battle of cool cars catching…
Y’all got some of that LSD? The limited-slip differential is perhaps the best drug known to hoon-kind. It’s the trick tech that keeps your burnouts from being sad one-tire fires. Once you drive one, you’re hooked. The Hoonigans released this absurd, nearly 45-minute megacut of their best burnouts, donuts and stunts,…
The Hoonigans bought a lousy $200 Miata with questionable mods and history, but never quite fell in love with it. It wasn’t fun to rip around their yard and took too much time away from their first love, a beat-up $350 BMW E36 named Shitcar. So, they made it into a “deathkart,” which is the most delightful revenge you…
The 1990s Bronco is, understandably, stuck very firmly in its reputation as OJ’s car and not much else. That shouldn’t be the case.
If you have the uncontrollable urge to send it over rad and possibly ill-advised jumps, nothing beats a $300 beater. With one, the Hoonigans made the absolute greatest thing I’ve watched all year: an almost 19 minute supercut of straight-up vehicular destruction that somehow doesn’t actually destroy this Buick.
What’s the most important thing to bring on an off-road adventure? Wrong. It’s a sense of humor. And, maybe, a willingness to have a plan B... through Z.
“Whatever it takes to keep interesting cars on the road” is how I approach the question of whether or not it’s okay to do electric conversions for older cars. Some purists hate it, and it’s true it’s never really the same as an internal combustion engine, but it gets the job done. And electrification has its…
Ken Block has owned a 1978 Ford Escort since 2008, but only relatively recently was it rebuilt into the machine you see above. It’s a good machine.
If you thought Block was done with Ford when Hoonigan pulled out of World Rallycross, oh no. Ford’s not going to give up that PR-and-tire-smoke machine that easily. Now we finally know what Block’s future plans involve: one of the most insane cars of all time: a 1991 Ford Escort Cosworth Group A rally car.
Ford and Hoonigan Racing have announced that they’re jointly withdrawing from the FIA World Rallycross Championship at the end of the 2017 season. The next move for racers Ken Block and Andreas Bakkerud and their Focus RS RX race cars is yet to be determined.
Advertisement
