Table of contents for Winter 2015-2016 in Roadkill

“LOCOS NATURALES ALEGRES” (which translates as “crazy, but in a good way”) – mechanic Jorge Romero describing the Azunia team Six miles from the finish line. We’d made it 1,294 miles across Mexico’s Baja California desert. We’d lost a bumper and a decklid and the entire passenger-side quarter panel. We’d swapped engines in a borrowed openair mechanic shop in Loreto. And now six miles were going to keep us from finishing. One of the mechanics became attached to a tequila stand. Another wouldn’t even look at me, afraid I might notice some dust or something in his eyes. I sat on a low stone wall in downtown San José del Cabo, dizzy from sun and lack of sleep, and tried not to lean back into a cactus as I watched…

GUMBALL! "GUMBALL" TOOK HOME NOT A SINGLE OSCAR IN 1976. IN AN OBVIOUS ANTI-AUTO CONSPIRACY, NEITHER DID "TAXI DRIVER." Given the giddy brew that constitutes 1976’s “The Gumball Rally”—dream cars in an illegal race from New York to California, authentic high-speed zooming and vrooming, plenty of antiestablishment gags, and a steady stream of spectacular stunts and pulchritudinous ladies in shrink-wrapped attire—it’s a wonder the movie didn’t sweep the Academy Awards. But “Gumball” took home not a single golden statuette. The New York Times, probably put off by the movie’s lack of subtitles, called it “nothing but one long exhaust pipe.” Hel-loooo? We’ve carefully watched all the big Oscar honorees for 1976—films such as “Network” and “All the President’s Men”—and haven’t found a single scene involving a Ferrari Daytona Spyder or…

Optima Batteries is the official power source of ROADKILL and the sponsor of the eight-yearsrunning Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitational at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway immediately following the SEMA Show in November. The OUSCI is a motorized triathlon that includes the Wilwood Speed-Stop Challenge (go as fast as you can, turn, run a slalom, then stop), the Detroit Speed Autocross, and the Falken Tire Hot Lap Challenge on a big road course. Add the fourth test, the Lingenfelter Performance Design & Engineering judging that we shamefully avoid with our ROADKILL cars, and it’s more of a quadathlon. The invitational event in Vegas became such a hit that the Ultimate Street Car Association was founded, and there’s now a nine-event series that leads up to the post-SEMA finale. The season…

Are you a Roadkiller? If we need to define that for you, you’re not. If you dig this mag and can cultivate an addiction to our ROADKILL show on YouTube, then there’s hope. You could be admitted to the Roadkill Nation, but don’t worry, we won’t tell anyone. Just send us photos and descriptions of your symptoms, and we might print ’em here, keeping it between us ’killers. Reveal your darkest gearhead secrets, and it’ll be cathartic when you see ’em in print, but fear not repercussion, because it’s not like anyone will read them. We’re lucky if people just flip through and look at the pictures. This rag costs $10, after all. Here’s what we want from you: off-the-wall project cars, Roadkilly photos of random cool stuff, and stories…

Pop quiz, hot shot: What’s the most underrated car on the market? You’re never going to guess, so I’m just going to tell you: the Chevrolet SS with a manual transmission. The only other equally forgotten about new car is the Ford Fiesta ST, but that’s another story. I’m not saying there aren’t lots of other fantastic cars out there for sale. I am saying when’s the last time you saw a Chevy SS, let alone thought about one? And you should be thinking about the big Chevy. Because it rocks. Holden began building the SS’ Zeta-platform sibling Commodore in Australia in 2006. It came to America in 2008 as the Pontiac G8. Bankruptcy forced GM to kill Pontiac in 2010. However, a shortened, two-door version of the Commodore came…

WHAT I’LL REMEMBER MOST IS THE HEAT. WASTELAND WEEKEND 2015 TOOK PLACE OVER THE FIRST WEEKEND OF AUTUMN, BUT NO ONE INFORMED THE SUN. TRIPLE-DIGIT TEMPERATURES AND THICK LEATHER BOOTS DON’T MIX SO WELL. HOWEVER, I CAN’T THINK OF A FINER PIECE OF SCORCHED EARTH ON WHICH TO HOLD A CRAZED “MAD MAX” PARTY. CAN YOU? YOU’RE NOT SAVING THE WORLD, BECAUSE IT’S ALREADY DEAD “How’d you get this car?” A young man dressed in his post-apocalyptic finest practically screamed at me. I’d driven to Wasteland Weekend in the General Maintenance, ROADKILL’s own personal Charger Hellcat cut to look like the infamous General Mayhem ’68 Charger. The thinking was that the four-door General would seamlessly blend in with the dozens of other patina'd “Mad Max” specials. And it did. But…

Four years ago, no one had seen anything like it. Part race, part carnival, and part petrol-powered party, The Race of Gentlemen—or TROG for those with a short attention span—put a stranglehold on the imagination of the hot rodding nation as social media exploded with images of authentic vintage-spec roadsters blasting sand on a New Jersey beach. Overnight, a fresh “new old stock” design for the neo-modern car event was created, a new aesthetic took the hobby by storm, and TROG was added to bucket lists worldwide. TROG is the mastermind of Jersey native Meldon Van Riper Stultz III, a hop-up builder, motorcycle guru, and hot rodding historian supreme. He built his concept for TROG around many of the retro-styled shows that he’s thrown in the New Jersey/New York metro…

*Fastest PRODUCTION Cadillac. See sidebars. HAMMER DOWN, CHIN ON SWORD—-HERE WE GO. The Virginia City Hillclimb, which races up Nevada State Route 341, is 5.2 miles in length, features 20 corners, and rises from 5,000 feet above sea level at the bottom to 6,200 feet by the time you cross the bridge just below the sheriff’s detention center that serves as the finish line. The event was first run in 1964, and I was invited to drive in this year’s by the event’s director of technical operations, Scott Strohmeyer. Naturally, I brought a Cadillac. Not your granddad’s floaty, fits-five-corpses-in-the-trunk Cadillac, mind you. No, I elected to go with the fastest, most powerful production Caddy of all time, the 2016 CTS-V. Capable of hitting an honest-to-insane 200 miles per hour, the…

Big Daddy Don Garlits is one of the most badass car guys in existence. If there were a comic strip universe populated by gearhead superheroes, Gar would be a main character, arriving at the exact moment to save the day and then disappearing in one of his Swamp Rat dragsters before Batman could even get his pointy mask on. One of the reasons Garlits is so high on our list is because he’s never stopped. Since 1950, he has never stopped racing, never stopped building engines, never stopped saving the day. The Goodwood Festival of Speed is a racing event held in West Sussex, England. It was started in the ’90s by Charles March, whose grandfather ran races on the Goodwood property in the ’50s. Vintage and modern race cars…

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Americans love a conspiracy theory. JFK was taken out by CIA hit men. The moon landings were faked. Donald Trump’s hair is real. Oh, and Porsche deliberately prevents its entry-level Cayman sports car from shaming the iconic 911. I first drove a 911 30 years ago, and still I remember the clarity of the steering and the clattery rasp and razor-sharp throttle response of the aircooled flat-six hung out behind the rear axle. I remember, too, how the chassis felt disconnected on imperfect roads, the front end bob-bob-bobbing like a speedboat while the rear end rumba’d like a Vegas showgirl’s bum. But most of all, I remember being puzzled that a sports car was so difficult to drive fast. Every corner was a white-knuckle tightrope walk between terminal understeer and…

Burning 1,000-dollar bills while having an anvil dropped on your head would be a lot cheaper and easier than racing in Hot Rod Drag Week, but it wouldn’t make you legendary. Drag Week does. It’s all about taking the quickest street-legal car you can build, savagely drag racing it five times in five days at four tracks, and—most of all—surviving a 1,000-plus-mile road trip while you’re at it. The guys who strive for speed over survival are the overachievers of fragging parts, but even the tamest entries demonstrate a talent for destruction. Drag Week doesn’t just invite failure—it rolls out the red carpet. The cars range from junk dragged from barns a week earlier to full-on 3,500-hp Pro Mod race cars turned street legal. Ish. In between are classes for…

WE TOOK A CHALLENGER HELLCAT, A CHARGER HELLCAT, AND A VIPER AND TRASHED THE WHEE OUT OF ’EM. OFF-ROAD, EVEN. FIFTY YEARS AGO, THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE. JUST CHECK OUT THESE PHOTOS OF VARIOUS CARS BEING SCIENTIFICALLY ANALYZED BY MOTOR TREND. "GROUND CLEARANCE OF 6.7 INCHES PROVED HANDY ON BACKROADS, AND STURDY SUSPENSION SOAKED UP BUMPS AND BAD JOLTS IN GOOD ORDER." MOTOR TREND, JUNE ’63 "THE GT350 IS ONE CAR THAT’LL NEVER PUT YOU TO SLEEP AT THE WHEEL." MOTOR TREND, MAY ’65 "F-85’S HEAVY-DUTY SUSPENSION WOULD BOTTOM, BUT ONLY WHEN GOING THROUGH HIGH-SPEED DIPS LIKE THIS ONE AT 65+ MPH." — MOTOR TREND, SEPTEMBER ’64 "THE GTO’S EXTRA-STIFF SPRINGS AND SHOCKS WEREN’T NEARLY SO HARD-RIDING OVER ROUGH, ROCKY TERRAIN AS WE WERE PREPARED FOR." MOTOR…

SPECS: '73 PLYMOUTH OFF-ROADRUNNER ENGINE: Cummins 5.0L V-8 diesel TRANSMISSION: ATS Performance Allison 1000 TRANSFER CASE: Off Road Design NP205 FRONT AXLE: Dana 60, Detroit Locker, 4.56 gears REAR AXLE: Dynatrac Dana 80, ARB Air Locker, 5.38 gears SPRINGS & SUCH: Front Dual Fox 2.5 air shocks, rear Deaver leaf springs, Fox remote reservoir shocks TIRES & WHEELS: Maxxis RAZR MT: front 35x12.50R17, rear 40x12.50R17 on 17x9 American Racing Ansen Off-Road wheels STEERING: Off Road Connection full hydro LIGHTING: Headlights by HIDProjectors.com OTHER STUFF: Custom frame, cage, and suspension by Chappelle’s Kustoms; seats and harnesses by Mastercraft; transmission to transfer case adapter by Destroked; intercooler by Mishimoto; radiator by Flex-a-Lite; steel from Industrial Metal Supply; driveshafts by JE Reel; brakes by EBC; axle bearings by Dana Spicer; hubs and axleshafts…

THIS 4-YEAR-OLD CAN DRIVE CIRCLES AROUND YOU Very few kids get a Corvette for their third birthday. But very few kids are Lila Kalis, a 4-year-old blonde cutie who adores drifting. (Yeah, it’s a kid’s size ’Vette, but she’s already eyeing her dad’s 1,500-horsepower Camaro.) Lila first put the pedal to the floor at the ripe old age of 11 months. “She couldn’t even talk yet, really,” says dad Josh Kalis, a pro skateboarder. “We had an old G-Wagen Power Wheels, and I stuck her in it and showed her if you press this, it goes, and this is how you drive. She’d go two feet, stop, go two feet, stop. Most kids just keep on going until they run into something. She figured out right away that she was…

NEW CARS WE LIKE Fast, cool, loud, interesting ... Irecently had a Cadillac employee scream at me because Motor Trend said that the Camaro SS with the 6.2-liter LT1 V-8 is a better car than the ATS-V and its twin-turbo V-6. We fought for a while before I really pissed him off by saying that General Motors’ core competency is the small-block. I justified that statement by pointing out that the three most expensive vehicles it sells—Cadillac CTS-V, Escalade, and Corvette Z06—all sport small-blocks. The man from Cadillac may not have liked my answer, but it’s true. Moreover, the best product GM makes has a small-block. As well as a Cadillac chassis and a Chevy Bow Tie. Magical things happen when you remove weight. Although the previousgeneration Camaro started off…

Ain’t easy being an oligarch these days. The Gulfstream G650ER on 24-hour standby, the accounts at Tiffany & Co. for the … er … nieces, the fingerprints on the solid-gold bathroom taps in the London penthouse. And now some parvenu has gone and ordered a 728-foot yacht with seven decks, two pools and a master bedroom bigger than most New York apartments. Roman Abramovich is pissed his boat will now be almost 200 feet short of the benchmark, and he wants an aircraft carrier. But the worst bit? Finding a decent SUV. Even a smarmy junior partner at a Wall Street law firm a can afford a Range Rover or Porsche Cayenne these days. The $218,000 Mercedes-Benz G65 AMG is priced on the right side of exclusive, but it’s still…