Roadkill

SCHEDULE KEY: ORIGINAL PROGRAMS • RACING NEW ROADKILL EXTRA AND DIRT EVERY DAY EXTRA MONDAYS THROUGH FRIDAYS Nov. 21 Dirt Every Day Ep. 71 Nov. 22 GP Confidential, Brazil + Preview Abu Dhabi Nov. 23 HOT ROD Garage Ep. 59 Nov. 24 LIVE! Virgin Australia Supercars (Newcastle 500) Auto Mundial Motorsport Mundial Roadkill Ep. 72 Trans Am Racing Series (COTA) Nov. 27 LIVE! MOTOR TREND Awards (Los Angeles) Nov. 29 FIM Freestyle MX World Championship (Shenzhen, China) Dec. 1 Auto MundialMotorsport MundialPorsche Carrera Cup Australia (Gold Coast) Dec. 4 Engine Masters Ep. 29 Mobil 1 The Grid Dec. 5 SKUSA SuperNationals (Las Vegas) Dec. 6 FIM Freestyle MX World Championship (Sofia, Bulgaria) GP Confidential, Abu Dhabi + Post SeasonModified Ep. 7 Dec. 7 Put Up or Shut Up Ep. 7 Dec. 8 Auto MundialMotorsport Mundial Dec. 9 LIVE! Intercontinental Challenge Series (Sepang) Dec. 11 Real Road…

A s the Mickey T’s spun in the burnout box at Gateway Motorsports Park, the Hemi in my Chevy misfired, belched smoke from both side pipes, and covered the firewall in scalding motor oil. It was Day 2 of Hot Rod Drag Week, and we were dead tired and dead broke, and we now had a dead engine. During the prelude to what should’ve been an epic quarter-mile pass down the dragstrip, the intake valve in the No. 3 cylinder broken in half and smashed against the massive domed piston. The pieces of stainless steel were sucked upward through the intake manifold by the rotors of The Blower Shop 8-71 supercharger and unceremoniously redistributed throughout the engine. The parts played pingpong inside cylinders 2, 4, 6, and 8. When the…

I’m not going to jump it,” I told Josh McGuckin as he explained the best practices for landing a slightly modified but still mostly stock VW Beetle. We were hurtling along a sandy wash in the Mojave desert. “When you’re driving off-road, you never know when you’re going to jump it,” he said. Maybe 5 miles later we were airborne, and I wished I’d paid more attention to the earlier conversation. But the bug knew the way home, and we made it back to ground and to camp in one piece. Josh was part of the Project Baja VW team, a group of friends who built a Class 11 Volkswagen for the Baja 1000 and liked it enough the first time to try it again. They were in California letting a…

The chrome door handles are not plastic. They’ll burn you on a hot day and freeze you on a subzero night, but they won’t crack and break. The doors close with a thunk, like a log falling on mossy ground, not a thin metal and plastic hollow clang. The Jeep is unusual in that it doesn’t have a big suspension lift or massive tires—at least unusual for me because getting in the back bucket seats is not a climb-up but rather a sit-down affair. The dogs—who aren’t equipped with the longest legs—don’t need help to get in. The seats are worn and covered with wool blankets from thrift stores, and the carpet needs vacuuming. It has carpet. The steering wheel is as thin as a spaghetti noodle but steers so easily…

Dwell in the world of the car culture for as long as I have, and you need not be especially observant to notice things. What I’m focusing on is the project car itself and what seems to define a worthy machine. I guess I can dig back beyond my own experience to a time of Model T or A Fords, but I’ll fast forward to the muscle car era. I remember when the most sought after of these machines were derelict, unwanted, and cheap. They were a natural resource for automotive fun. As time marched on, the most desirable of these machines became harder and harder to obtain. Alternatively, we moved to the “regular” nonmuscle versions of these same sporty cars. Before long, just about any two-door coupe or hardtop…

I was between cars and needed a daily driver for a week. My mate Barry said I could borrow his shop car. He didn’t toss me the keys because ... well ... there weren’t any. Barry fixed Saabs and Citroëns for a living. He also wrenched on Ferraris and Porsches for the only dealer in my hometown that sold such exotica. He was a big, jovial, working-class bloke who loved a beer and lived in the suburbs. But he had this thing about oddball cars. Barry’s shop car at the time was a 1970s Citroën DS21. Introduced at the 1955 Paris Auto Show, the DS was—in the context of it contemporaries—the most advanced production automobile ever launched. Most cars of the time were boxy, upright things, but the DS looked like it…