Table of contents for Summer 2016 in Roadkill

1 If you don’t know who Rod Hall is, then you’re about to meet a guy so tough that he’ll put hair on your chest, even if you’re a woman. Actually, if you don’t know who Rod Hall is and you’re into cars, you probably shouldn’t admit that out loud. He’s The Man when it comes to off-road motorsports—he won the first-ever Baja 1000 in 1967 and has competed in every Baja 1000 since then. He has an unheard-of 35 consecutive wins. He’s the only person to win the 1000 overall (meaning the fastest vehicle, regardless of class) in a 4x4 vehicle. Rod’s first off-road vehicle was a ’59 VW Beetle. “I had a soft right foot and maybe a feel for how to make things do what they weren’t…

Bugatti! Lakes! Lies! No, this isn’t a story about that guy in Texas who purposely drove a $2.2 million Veyron into a lake for insurance money then blamed it on a pelican. That guy was not the first person to dump a valuable Bug in the water. It happened once before in 1934, and the truth behind its watery parking spot is even harder to find than the car was. For years there were legends around Lake Maggiore on the Swiss-Italian border of a 1925 Bugatti Brescia Type 22 roadster sunk beneath the water. Bugattis have always been rare and valuable cars, so even in the 1950s, the idea of one at the bottom of a lake had serious romantic appeal. In the late ’60s a scuba diving club came…

ROADKILL NATION: WHATCHA GOT? Think of the craziest thing you’ve seen from a member of the Roadkill Nation. Now go find that guy and teach him to use a camera because the biggest problem we have when we try to share the depths of automotive insanity from within our group is that dudes can’t get photos in focus, cropped properly, or with higher resolution than a screen shot from Snapchat. Try to get warmed up, ’cuz we want to share your stuff with the whole world! If you want into the next issue, please send pics and words to TheGuys@Roadkill.com. We need sharp, high-resolution images (a large smartphone pic is fine), and you gotta tell us the story of what’s happening in your photos, plus include your name and where…

FOLKS DON'T DRAG RACE minivans and SUVs much. Sure, there’s an NHRA Jr. Street class that allows them, but it’s not really a thing. Admit this as exhibit A in the argument: It was better to grow up in the ’60s and ’70s than in the ’80s, ’90s, and noughties, on the grounds that the family trucksters of those earlier halcyon days were indeed raced. Chevrolet would even sell you a full-on solid-lifter 425-horse, 427-cube L72 big block in a wagon that wasn’t good for much other than drag racing. One found its way into a car that looked exactly like the one your humble scribe’s parents schlepped us from coast to coast in—a no-wood, stripper Dover White over blue 1969 Kingswood wagon dubbed “Lead Sled” piloted by Tom Akin…

Roadkill guys like engines with pistons and gas or diesel. Really fast guys like thrust. From 1963 to 1970, there was a bloodthirsty rivalry for the top-speed record among Art Arfons, Walt Arfons, Gary Gabelich, and Craig Breedlove as they set records of 407 to 634 mph at the Bonneville Salt Flats. Richard Noble and Andy Green took over and in 1997 broke the sound barrier at Black Rock Desert in Nevada, setting a record of 760.343 mph. What do these speeds have in common? All the cars were jet- or rocket-powered. So how can a Roadkill kinda guy get in on that? Meet Bob Maddox. Bob is the pulsejet guru, building thrust using simple gasoline-burning jet engines crafted from stainless steel tubes tailored into a tuned shape. A pulsejet…

People ask all the time how Finnegan and I stumbled into our gearhead dream jobs as hosts of ROADKILL, and even with four and half seasons and 50 episodes under our belts, we’re still puzzled. See, we used to be semi-respectable automotive print journalists— most recently at Hot Rod magazine—yet now we’re focused on video and all the spin-offs of the ROADKILL show. A 3-D example is the grit-covered publication you’re holding, and we also have a few Roadkill Nights events coming in 2016. The whole trip has been pretty boggling. None of our successes or sponsorships would exist without the fans—we wholeheartedly appreciate you guys— so we’re celebrating the 50-episode milestone by reacting to fan requests for more magazine stories connected to the show itself. Prepare for overload: This…

Roadkill superfans have seen “Roadkill Garage” on Motor Trend OnDemand, where David Freiburger and I mess around with cars in my shop. My favorite episode so far is No. 4, the one where we revive Freiburger’s ’70 Dodge Challenger into tire-burning greatness. But wait! How did he end up with a ’70 Challenger? Go back to the pilot episode of “Roadkill Garage,” viewable on YouTube, and witness us suffering through a weekend rebuild of the 351 Cleveland in Freiburger’s ’67 Cougar. In the end, I liked the Cougar more than Freiburger did. As the Cougar video shoot was wrapping up, the bench racing was just getting started. Freiburger had been shopping for a cheap muscle-car-era Mopar project for months and had little luck with the “cheap” part of the plan,…

Too much is just enough, and overkill is Roadkill. Mercury Racing is down with that program and delivers some wacko crate engines. They’re 9.0 liters, which is 552 cubic inches, and have twin 94mm turbos, 26 psi of boost, two throttle bodies, four camshafts, four valves per cylinder, and 1,650 horsepower. There are larger-displacement crate engines and some with more power, but none come from an OE manufacturer—Mercury Marine— while claiming to have “luxury-car-like drivability.” These engines have massive girth with a 4.57x4.21-inch bore and stroke and an overall width (for the engine alone, not the exhaust) of 30 inches. With an aluminum block and heads, they weigh just 700 pounds less than the turbo setup. These are designed for offshore race boats, but Mercury Racing has been going after…

CROP DUSTER LIVES, QUICKLY The Crop Duster is a ’70 Plymouth A-body that got a high-deck 440 bigblock swap in episode 40 of ROADKILL, and it ran the quarter in 12.39 seconds at 113 mph. That wasn’t good enough, so off-camera Freiburger and Dulcich installed a low-deck big-block Mopar with only 383ci; it made 500 hp instead of the 440’s 439 hp, it fit better, and we were able to use new TTI headers that didn’t require any dents. We also got rid of the junk transmission and installed a fresh Torqueflite from TCI. The guys got that running in episode 2 of “Roadkill Garage,” which you can see on Motor Trend On Demand, and if you haven’t yet, here’s a spoiler: The bigger-power 383 didn’t go much quicker than…