Sommaire pour Fall 2015 de Roadkill

SPECS: SHERMAN E8 MEDIUM BATTLE TANK SERVICE: 1942-1955 MANUFACTURED: U.S.A CREW: 5 ENGINE: Two 7-71 Detroit Diesel 5.0L/536-hp/561-lb-ft twin-turbodiesel DOHC 32-valve V-8s MAIN GUN: 76mm high velocity SECONDARY WEAPONS: 2 .30-cal and 1.50-cal machine guns WEIGHT: 42 tons AT THE PUMP: Up to 150 miles on 175 gallons of gas OUR TAKE: What proved to be the best tank on the battlefeld goes fast and is easy to repair. It won the biggest war the world has ever seen. It started with a phone call. “Hey, wanna crush a car with a tank?” “Duh, yes!” I replied, not even knowing who was at the other end of the phone. The PR guy had me at “crush.” So we set a date, and I took a road trip from Detroit to…

ROADKILL sold its soul to the devil. Or did the devil sell his soul to us? Either way, ROADKILL is now the title sponsor of the largest and stupidest racing series in the whole wide world, the 24 Hours of LeMons. Famously thought up as a goof after too much beer and Chinese food, LeMons has gone on to spawn its own passionate cult following, with thousands of drivers participating in around 20 annual races in the U.S. (and Australia, supposedly). You can best picture the whole traveling circus as a Grateful Dead show, except with bloody knuckles and the stench of ATF on hot asphalt replacing sheets of blotter acid and patchouli oil. People are nuts, what can we say? Still, the allure of a LeMons race is so…

NOT MANY PRODUCTION VEHICLES MAKE BO AND LUKE LOOK LIKE PUNKS. The most flabbergasting aspect of the 2014 Mercedes-Benz G63 AMG 6x6 isn’t that it exists, but that it’s a production vehicle. As in, you can buy one. Well, you could have before it went out of production earlier this year. The craziest part? Mercedes sold more than 100 of them at more than $500K a pop. I spent a day a while back at the Magna Steyr plant in Graz, Austria—home of the Geländewagen—and saw five 6x6s: three customer trucks, one for display, and the slatecolored beast you see here. Turns out that the gargantuan 6x6 is actually handbuilt on the same assembly line that produces every other G-Wagen. Get this: People can’t stop buying the regular fourwheeled G-Wagen.…

Although numbers never tell the entire story, when it comes to the 1911 Fiat S76—better known to car nuts the world over as the Beast of Turin—they just might. Hear me out: 290 horsepower and a supposed 2,000 lb-ft of torque from a 28.4-liter inline-four. Actually, we can just stop there. Yes folks, you read that right. The Beast’s pistons displace 433 cubic inches—each! Then there’s the fact that in 1911 some whack job hit 135 mph over a flying mile. Please note that the Beast has no doors or roof, features a floppy external chain drive, and spits fire. Seriously, this car spits fire. Constantly. You can watch the firing order via the open headers because current owner and restorer Dustin Pittaway never bothered to attach an exhaust. Once…

There’s a lot of resentment against people who have our dream cars sitting around, wasting away. We rage about the injustice, yet we all love those Internet galleries of vehicles sinking back into the earth, sun-faded and wrapped in vines. What’s the deal? Why do people hold on to things they don’t use, and why does it make us so mad yet unable to look away? We weren’t looking for an answer when, attracted by a 1950s Mercury parked behind a white ’30s Dodge, we stopped at a hilly property somewhere along State Route 41 in Mississippi. A closer look revealed numerous rusting machines of various vintages in a field loosely caged with barbed wire. As we poked around, trying to gauge at exactly which point our curiosity would become…

There’s a new trend coming. ROADKILL is amplifying it, and our ’68 Dodge Charger is like a wall of Marshall stacks. The trend is ratty muscle cars. It’s not just about driving garbage. It’s about making a personal statement. The attitude strikes a similar pose to the now-waning rat rod craze, but in ’60s and ’70s cars rather than rods of the ’20s to ’40s. The pivotal difference is that rat rods tend to be art projects that happen to drive. Rat muscle is more about, “Forget paint, I’m gonna make this thing work.” Sometimes work is going fast. Other times it means just becoming functional rather than being neglected as yard art. We’re seeing ratty muscle-car trenders falling into three categories: 1) rare or desirable body styles that have…

Tanks have played important roles on screen. Here are seven must-see tank films if you love these machines and the people who fight in them. “Patton” (1970) Stars: George C. Scott, Karl Malden Summary: The film depicts the controversial life of Gen. George S. Patton during World War II. The battle scenes are nearly as epic as Patton himself. This movie won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and was selected by the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry for preservation because of its cultural and historical significance. Best line: “Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.” “Kelly’s Heroes” (1970) Stars: Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas, Don…

Back in 1971, the year Apollo 15 astronaut David Scott became the first man to drive on the moon and the first Starbucks coffee shop opened in Seattle, the 4.4-liter, 352-hp V-12 in Ferrari’s rakish, thrusting, 174-mph Daytona coupe was one of the most exotic and expensive engines in the world. So naturally you’d want to stuff one under the hood of a Pontiac Firebird. Ummm, well, OK. In 1971, Spiro Agnew was the vice president of the United States and Keith Richards stayed conscious long enough to record “Exile on Main Street.” Some things cannot be rationally explained. But the Ferraribird exists. It’s real. And we’ve driven it. Bill Mitchell had the best job in the world. As head of General Motors Design from 1958 to 1977, he led…

WHAT JOSH RIDES ▪ ’15 Honda CRF450R ▪ Custom ignition ▪ Modified airbox ▪ FMF single titanium exhaust ▪ Factory-spec modified suspension ▪ Tag 6091 handlebars and grip ▪ GPR steering stabilizer ▪ 51T rear sprocket ▪ Trimmed seat and side plates for grab holes ▪ Flip levers Stock 449cc single-cylinder four-stroke, but if he’s at altitude, Josh runs a high-compression piston, aftermarket cam, and different fuel and ignition tune. It makes slightly more than the stock 53 horsepower and is a bit more responsive, has stronger idle, and more bottomend mid-range power ▪ For the triple backflip, the front forks had an extra 5 psi of air pressure and adjusted suspension clickers to enable max rebound from the forks. NITRO CIRCUS You might recognize the TV series “Nitro Circus”…

Yet’s just start with the good stuff: the engine. How much power from 4.0 liters? Five hundred three horses and 516 lb-ft of torque. Dang. The crazed, power-mad scientists over in Affalterbach—aka AMG engineers— are coaxing more than 125 hp per liter from the V-8. They’re doing so with two turbochargers mounted in the V-8’s V. Yup, the hot side of the headers exit inside the V. Because there’s barely a centimeter for the exhaust gas to travel, all that power appears with no lag. The car is rear-wheel drive, too. The interior’s very nice, and the openpore wood looks cool, but I’m warning you that white leather doesn’t mix well with coffee and Taco Bell grease. So, you know, tread lightly. That said, there’s no shame or stigma associated…

FOR A CAR JUNKIE, THIS PLACE IS HALLOWED GROUND You’ve probably seen images from this place before. Big-finned Cadillacs sinking slowly in the loam, a ’67 GTO peering out from waist-high weeds, vines curling around the mirrors and in and out of hood scoops, windshields starred and fogged from decades of quiet rest in the woods. There are more than 6 miles of trails in and around the Georgia forest that houses these picturesque scenes of abandonment, and owner Dean Lewis knows exactly how striking it is. There is a sign on the fence that reads “CARS, ART, NATURE, HISTORY.” That sums up Dean’s approach to his 34-acre vintage car scrapyard pretty well. Actually, calling it a scrapyard might lead to the wrong impression; maybe “adventureland” would be better. Dean…

All you need is a checkbook,” says David Uhrig, owner of Military Vehicle Sales and Appraisals in Chillicothe, Ohio. Uhrig has been acting as a military vehicle sales broker for 40 years and has helped people buy and sell some extremely powerful machines. “It’s no different than buying a used Mustang,” he says. However, even some of the most beat-up, rusted-out tanks come with a price tag nearly as heavy as the actual machines. On Uhrig’s website, armyjeeps.net, prices range from $24,500 for a rebuilt 1964 Ferret Mk 1/2 Scout Car to $400,000 for a 1944 M7-B1 105 Howitzer Motor Gun Carriage. And that was just the first page. “If someone wants a fully restored vehicle or something that looks like it would be heading into battle,” Uhrig says, “the price…

Never forget that the entire gearhead world spun from the hands and minds of people just like you. Go back to Nikolaus August Otto. Dude sold vegetables for a living before he started wrenching, and now—150-odd years after many experiments exploded in his face—you know his name because of the Otto cycle. That’s the four-stroke cycle, which is how your gasoline car engine runs unless it’s unfortunate enough to be a Prius. The Dodge brothers were tinkerers, too, and invented a sealed ball bearing that was the impetus for manufacturing bicycles before they sold that deal to start a machine shop that made parts for carmakers. Then they became auto manufacturers themselves. Bicycles were also the background of Orville and Wilbur Wright. Henry Ford, who tinkered with watches as a…

“They’re not made to put up with a full-grown adult going down a hill with rocks.” That’s Matt Myrick talking, and he might be the winningest racer in a motorsport you’ve probably never heard of: Extreme Barbie Jeep Racing. It started around 2008 as the “wheeling equivalent of Showtime After Dark.” Under the cover of night, people would ride Barbie’s parts hard. Now, it’s a regular sideshow— in the daylight—at various off-road events in Alabama and Arkansas, and it’s popping up at other spots around the nation, too. Seems everyone’s starting to do it Barbie-style. "AND THEN THE TIRES TURNED ON THEIR OWN, AND I STARTED FLIPPING FORWARD." The Carnage is in the Struggle Matt, who is also owner of Busted Knuckle Films (bustedknucklefilms.com), the purveyor of the videos from…

It’s crumpled and faded. Lumpy fiberglass distorts the wheelwells and the quarter panels, and the trim above the grille undulates like an ocean wave, yet the GTS emblems and bumblebee stripes are original, as is the 340 tucked between battered fenders. This is the Fourth Street Dart, a landmark to a small group of tourists and locals who track it through NYC’s East Village, always just ahead of street cleaning day. In this part of Manhattan, near NYU, on a block of small theaters and independent art galleries, the Dart looks out of place. This is an area of boring, boring cars. There is no street on Earth where you’d less expect to see a Detroit muscle car, and even non-car people succumb to the Dart’s photogenic charms. Googling “GTS…

Say hello to the Bentley Continental GT3-R. Savile Row meets Pep Boys. The Queen of England in a Hilfiger hoodie. A $341,025 middle finger salute to the luxury car status quo. The Continental GT3-R celebrates Bentley’s return to international sports-car racing in the GT3 category, long a happy hunting ground for the likes of Ferrari and Porsche. But this is no stripes and spoilers marketing gimmick: There’s some serious engineering under the skin. The GT3-R shares its twin-turbo, 4.0-liter V-8 with the Bentley GT3 race car—crank, rods, and pistons are identical— and develops 571 horsepower and 516 lb-ft of torque. Mat your right foot, and turbo overboost will deliver an additional 20 horsepower and 37 lb-ft of torque for 15 seconds. The engine drives all four wheels through an eightspeed…