Table of contents for Fall 2017 in Roadkill

I was in the back of the pack of 20 lifted 4x4s as we rattled across grapefruit-sized rocks en route to the Grand Canyon. The day was hot, the air was filled with dust from multiple silt beds, and everyone was grimy from camping and four-wheeling, but the destination was worth it. As we came to the edge of the Whitmore Creek overlook, I knew it was something most tourists would never see. The average tourist visits the south rim of the Grand Canyon National Park, and even fewer visit the north rim entrance, but there are still more places to see this wonder of erosion. We found an amazing view after a rough ride during this year’s Ultimate Adventure trip with Petersen’s 4-Wheel & Off-Road magazine. I was driving…

SST IN THE LBC Few things quite capture the childlike glee of motor racing like Stadium Super Trucks. Multitalented racer Robby Gordon founded the series to reboot the exciting short-track, arena-style truck racing where he got his start. The trucks get their power from a race-prepared dry-sump Chevy LS3 crate motor that makes more than 600 horsepower. The trucks weigh about 2,900 pounds, and although they look plenty big on a street circuit, Stadium Super Trucks are essentially three-quarter-scale versions of Pro2 trucks like you’d find in The Off-Road Championship (TORC) or the Lucas Oil Off-Road Racing Series. When it came time to put the Stadium Super Trucks in front of an audience, Gordon managed to talk his way onto IndyCar support bills, which put the trucks on the famous…

Early in the morning on the cruise day before the inaugural Zip-Tie Drags in Tucson, Arizona, a group of us were discussing the cars we’d seen. “Did you see the Volvo with the Ford motor in it?” “You crazy. That was an LS.” “What? No! It was a turbocharged four-cylinder.” “The blue one on snow tires?” “No, the white one on snow tires!” Eventually we stopped shaking donuts at each other in rage and realized there were a lot of modded Volvos at the event. We corralled three for a photo shoot at Tucson Dragway and grabbed snaps of a few others during the drive and racing. Since then, we’ve seen modded Volvos at the One Lap of America, in the New England Forest Rally, and at local car shows.…

As a young boy in rural Pennsylvania, E.J. Kowalski was lucky enough to witness the world famous Joie Chitwood Thrill Show on the troop’s cross-country tour. The image of those stunt guys jumping through fire and tipping hot rods up on two wheels made a lasting impression on little E.J. “The Joie Chitwood Thrill show came to town at the local fair when I was a kid,” he says. “Later I saw the Clark Gable movie To Please a Lady, which had a short scene of the Chitwood show in 1949. The image of a ’49 Ford driving on two wheels stuck in my head as being one of the neatest things I’d ever seen.” Since those early days, E.J. has racked up one mega motorinfused resume. It includes being…

FOR SALE:WONDERLAND I was sitting in my rental car outside of JP’s Diner in Salmon Arm, British Columbia, because JP very reasonably doesn’t open his doors before 7 a.m. There was a chill in the air as winter gave way to spring in B.C.’s interior, with snow still visible on the mountains that ring the town. I’d driven up here before dawn from Kelowna, with Okanogan Lake’s 85 miles of shoreline my near constant companion just off the shoulder, the sun creeping through the morning mist that until only a few moments ago shrouded the valley’s rocky peaks. My contemplation of Canada’s weather patterns was broken by the sudden screen of tires and the thumping of a lumpy cam. A voice called out to me from the entrance to the…

OHIO JUNE - JULY 1 By the time you read this, we’ll have run Zip-Tie Drags events in Ohio, Tennessee, and Illinois. We’re going to predict the future based on the Norwalk race and say with confidence that they all were spectacular and hilarious and we love them. You can still join us for the one in Tucson, Arizona, in January 2018. Let’s take a closer look at the day we spent in Norwalk, Ohio, at Summit Motorsports Park. 3K Hooptie Challenge How does it work? This is pretty simple. At the appointed time, you line up your car in the staging lanes. You then roll out in front of the grandstand while Freiburger and Finnegan assess your car on the microphone. If they figure your car would sell this…

Wayne got drunk and peed on my notes, so this is the short version of the 2017 Mexican 1000 based on what I can remember. Nah, I’m kidding. Well, not about Wayne. That happened—he was sad because his car had just blown up and it appeared we were out of the race on only the third day. The cervezas sneak up on you fast—but I can recall the whole week with perfect clarity, and you can get the long version on Roadkill.com. Here are some of the highlights. I SHARED CO-DRIVING DUTIES with an off-roading legend, Sal Fish—who took on the running of the SCORE Baja 1000 with Mickey Thompson in 1973, helping build it into the most famous off-road race in the world. After he sold SCORE, he was…

It might be hard to believe when you watch inflated car shows or search cool iron in ad listings, but the root core of hot rodding is cheap, homebuilt performance. In the ’40s and ’50s those 1930s Fords were jalopies off the junk pile, often traded for a few days’ wages. In the late ’70s and ’80s, muscle cars from the 1960s were considered antiquated gas guzzlers with a low social standing. Regular production cars were just stacked up like trash at scrapyards. Greasers and misfits perceived the inherent value and potential, and that was the game—supercar performance on a worker’s buy-in. Times have changed. Classic muscle has become gold, and even regular cars of the era are not cheap. The pure muscle cars were the first to escalate, then…

THIS CAR HAS NEVER FAILED TO FAIL, YET WE ALL LOVE IT SO. WHY? SERIOUSLY, WHY? The lovable loser. The mascot. The Rudy character if Rudy fumbled the ball. That person who can never get ahead no matter how hard he or she tries. Every family/friend group/ Shakespearean play has one, and ROADKILL is no exception. Ours is called the Rotsun. The rotting hulk of a 1971 Datsun 240Z was pushed butt-first into the garage in Episode 25, flakes of rust showering down from its tire-stuffed hatch, unable to move under its own power, and more than likely both a biological danger and a fire hazard. It was the winter of 2014, and the mottled concerto of corrosion dubbed “Rotsun” had been sitting for more than a year at ROADKILL…

W ith a resounding bellow, the Olympia Express startles the French racing faithful at Le Mans. The hulking 1972 Dodge Charger dwarfs the alien-shaped Mirages and Porsches parked nearby, and if the muscle car’s shape doesn’t completely cast a shadow over the pint-sized sports cars, the idling Chrysler 426 Wedge drowns out their small-bore buzz just the same. The year is 1976. NASCAR has come to Le Mans. Just a few days before the United States’ bicentennial, a pair of hulking American coupes traveled an ocean to conquer the world’s biggest endurance race. The fact that the Charger appeared in the 24 Hours of Le Mans at all was a confluence of strange circumstances. The worldwide 1973 oil crisis pushed many factory teams from competition as budgets tightened and companies reined…

If you’re a sportsman drag racer, there is nothing about the 840-hp, supercharged 2018 Dodge Demon that will feel unfamiliar at a track. Drop the air pressure in the rear drag radials—in this case Nitto NT05R 315/40-18s designed just for the Demon and cambered just perfectly for the flattest possible tire patch—then swap out the matching 11-inch-wide front wheels for skinny 4.5-inch front runners, add your race fuel, and roll into the staging lanes. So far pretty standard. Roll into the burnout box and hold the line lock to keep the car in one place while you warm up the rears in a cloud of smoke. It does not prove difficult to make smoke from the rears on this car with or without engaging the lock. Creep on up, ready…

How does it work? Every car that passed drag-racing tech inspection received an entry form. After filling it out with the name and car info, they dropped it in a bin at the ROADKILL merchandise tent. Finnegan and Freiburger drew the names of the 10 fans in front of the grandstand. When it came time to race, Finnegan and Freiburger each picked a car they wanted to race with the ROADKILL cars they wanted to drive. It took a few minutes to remember how it worked, but we figured it out: The winner of each round picked who raced in the next one. That could entail picking a car to run against or picking two cars to face off. This continued until the final pair with a winner-take-all last run.…

Your Stuff Is The Best Stuff! There’s just something about getting to show off your best (or worst) work in print that makes your mom so proud. This is the place to do it. We find these builds online in the RK Nation section at Roadkill.com and on social media, or you send them to us at TheGuys@roadkill.com ATTN RK NATION. We like taking pictures with you at events, and we really like seeing what you’re building and driving. The better your story, and the better your photos, the better your chances of finding yourself right here, and the prouder your mom will be. VALCEDES David Brooks has built a bit of a sleeper with this four-door 1974 Plymouth Valiant, and it’s not what you’d expect. There’s no turbocharged 360 or…

For reasons that are too nerdy to explain (even for me), I was at a recent meeting of the Los Angeles Astronomical Society. The chairman was welcoming the new members, and he said something that stuck in my head. “Don’t be afraid to ask questions,” he said. “The smartest person you’ll meet here at one time knew nothing until someone answered their questions.” That’s the attitude I take going into every car show, every race, and every build shop. It’s my job to ask questions, but also, it’s the best way to learn and the best way to make some new friends. It can be scary to ask. There’s this mindset that people who don’t already know don’t deserve to know. I’m sure you’ve seen it, or even done it—the…

The words “Toyota Land Cruiser” might not conjure up an association with “land speed record,” but don’t tell that to the Toyota Motorsports Technical Center. With a couple of big-honkin’ turbos, they’ve sent their 2016 Toyota Land Speed Cruiser to the title of World’s Fastest SUV. “Retired” NASCAR driver Carl Edwards took the honors with the recordsetting run of 230.02 mph at the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, California. When it came time to set records, veteran road racer Craig Stanton, who had been working with Toyota on the project, warmed up the SUV with a 198-mph run. He then handed the car over to Edwards for a sprint down Mojave’s 2.5-mile runway. After a first run of 211 mph, the NASCAR driver equaled the existing record claimed…

Did you somehow miss the past six months of Demon buildup? If so, here’s the basics of this factory possession, a street-legal drag car with a ton of race tech built right in. 840 horses! 770 lb-ft of torque! 9.65-second e.t. at 140 mph! 2.3 seconds to get to 60 mph! That’s pretty cool production-car bragging stuff. The Demon has a street setup and an optional high-octane, small front-runner setup. In street trim, the Demon ticks off the boxes in 9.96 seconds at 136 mph, thanks to 808 hp on 91-octane fuel. Still brag-worthy. Dodge says it will make 3,000 vehicles for the United States and 300 vehicles for Canada, with deliveries to Dodge/SRT dealers beginning in fall of 2017. ENGINE: SUPERCHARGED V-8 The Demon engine is a supercharged 6.2-liter…

For our “Staff tries something new and thrilling” section this issue, we got dirty with Automobile associate editor Jonathon Klein. Our lessons took place at the Ventura Raceway fifth-mile banked dirt oval in Ventura, California. Our professor was multitime Sprint and Midget champion Cory Kruseman, and our classroom was a 700-hp, alcohol-injected, small-block-Chevypowered, 1,150-pound Sprint car. U nlike other driving schools, preinstruction was minimal. Basically it was just how to start the car—they have no starters and use a pushtruck to get going—and how to not kill everyone when you come back into the infield after your laps. “There’s no point in telling you how to drive these things until you’ve seen what they are like for yourself,” instructor Hobie Conway said. She was right. The Sprints are snorty, exaggerated…

NEW CARS WE LIKE S WE LIKE NEW CARS MINT! Words: Angus MacKenzie peed is the only truly modern vice. Sex and drugs? We’ve been doing that stuff for millennia. Rock ’n’ roll? That’s not gonna get you locked up even if you’re the world’s biggest Nickelback fan. Nope. Speed is where cutting-edge technology stimulates primal thrill response. Until the inventions of the steam engine and the internal combustion engine, the fastest humans had ever gone was on horseback. Now we have a Ford that will do 216 mph. The Ford GT was born to race at Le Mans in 2016 and to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Ford’s epic 1-2-3 thrashing of Ferrari in the legendary 24 Hour race with another victory, though this time in the GTE class…

A fter a full day spent retracing his early days in California’s San Fernando Valley, Don “The Snake” Prudhomme finally works up the courage to knock on the door of the former Snake Racing shop in Northridge. The Snake earned his nickname as a cold-blooded drag racer in the early days of NHRA nitro cars, yet he asks me twice if I think he should go in as we pull a tropically bright supercar onto a small street lined with bland midcentury block buildings. “I haven’t been here in at least 30 years,” he says. “When I left, I was in a pickup truck. I never thought I’d come back in a McLaren.” At first glance, there’s not a lot of connection between the 2017 McLaren 570GT and a nostalgic tour…