Imagine yourself driving a car that can launch off of a stand-still position and hit 60 mph in just 1.6 seconds yet is only geared to do 132 mph. You can’t imagine it, can you?
Well, truth is sometimes stranger than fiction and this is living proof of that. ’This’, of course, is this car. It looks like a Toyota Tacoma, only it’s not. Built using a chrome-molly tubular space frame chassis that’s covered in a carbon fiber body, this car actually has some ridiculous power under its hood in the form of a 2.1-liter, four-cylinder, turbo-charged engine that produces around 1,000 horsepower. But as we’ve said, it’s top speed - 132 mph - isn’t really something you can brag about.
And just to show you how incredibly difficult this race car/truck is to drive, check out the video of the car being driven by Rod Millen - yeah, he’s the proud daddy of Rhys Millen - at the 2007 Goodwood Festival of Speed and watch how he can’t seem to fully corral it from going into the grass and do all that twitching. And this guy is a seasoned pro. Imagine if it was somebody who had the equivalent driving skills of an everyday Joe.
We swear there’s a car somewhere in the midst of all that smoke. You can actually see it too - or at least, glimpses of it - at the tail end of the video.
As far as catching the real deal up close and personal, we’re going to have to wait a little while longer when Monster World Rally, together with rally ace Ken Block, unveils the Gymkhana 3 2011 Ford Fiesta today at Taverna Aventine in San Francisco.
Be sure to check back in a few hours for the official details of Block’s new toy, the Gymkhana 3.
We’ve been featuring a number of videos here involving radio-controlled vehicles over the past few days and now we have another one, this time a highly-convincing group of rally cars, including a Subaru Impreza WRX, that takes off-road, radio-controlled mayhem to a new level.
We have to admit that the cars looked authentic enough to pass of as real rally cars; that is until you realize that their body panels shaked and rattled at the slightest movement, which, last time we checked, isn’t realy a particularly good sign for a top-end rally car. That and those enormous-looking dried-up leaves, relative to the size o the cars of course.
Once you get passed the stage of confusion and fully come to realiz that these are radio-controlled rally cars, then that’s when the fun begins. From porfessional tracks, dirt ramps, and all those sand drifts, this video would definitely make you want to grab your keys, head off to the nearest Toys ’R Us, and scoop up one of the bad boys.
After nine seasons in Formula 1, Kimi Raikkonen will now take part in the 2010 World Racing Championship for the Citroën Junior Team. Raikkonen’s departure from Formula 1 was a shock to some due to the contract he had with Ferrari for the 2010 season. Many rumors flew around in regards to where Raikkonen was headed, but none seemed to pan out as McLaren, Mercedes, and Toyota all signed other drivers.
Red Bull Racing team boss, Christian Horner has downplayed rumors that Raikkonen will be riding with them in 2011, but for now he is racing in the WRC. The World Racing Championship consists of 13 three-day events driven on surfaces ranging from gravel and tarmac to snow and ice. Here’s how Kimi Raikkonen overcame this special stage and obtained his first points in the 2010 WRC Jordan Rally. Enjoy!
When Travis Pastrana wants to get serious, he’s one of the most exciting and thrilling drivers in the world today. While he enjoys doing his fair share of insane stunts and fancy gimmicks, when it’s time to buckle up, he has no problem getting his hands dirty.
In this video, we catch Travis Pastrana at his competitive best, taking his Rally America Subaru WRX STI to a first-place finish at the 2010 Sno*Drift Rally back in late January. Together with his right-hand man, Christian Edstrom, Pastrana laid waste to the competition amidst freezing temperatures on the outskirts of Montmorencey, Michigan.
Some people might know Pastrana for his death-defying world record attempts, but for those who know his competitive side, this video is him at his best.
Remember that teaser video we had of Tanner Foust performing a drift along the famed strip of Mulholland Drive?
Well, here’s the whole video for you to enjoy.
The whole video was masterfully shot and the edits and cuts to the car’s interior as well as the slow-motion shots of Foust’s Rockstar Scion tC drift car is just plain mind-blowing. Foust manoeuvres his drift car with so much ease you’d actually think he was sipping on some Rockstar inside the car. But in all seriousness, there’s nothing like seeing someone do drift after drift after drift in a pretty intimidating road like Mulholland Drive, especially at that stretch Los Angelinos have come to call ‘The Snake’.
There needs to be some serious driving and drifting skills involved if anybody can even attempt to replicate what Tanner Foust did, which, if you still haven’t seen yet, you should watch right about now.
We love our rally car racing here at TopSpeed, and anytime we get an opportunity to show you what it’s like to be out on the dirt, we don’t waste time doing it.
By now, you’ve probably heard about Ken Block’s less-than-stellar showing at the Rally Mexico, which incidentally is the first-ever World Rally Championship race for Block and navigator Alex Gelsomino. While we’re going to attribute Block’s 18th place finish to a little case of ‘getting their feet wet’ in the art of WRC racing, we’re expecting the dynamic duo to have a better showing at the next race in Jordan on April 1-3.
In any event, we have here a WRC-exclusive of Block and Gelsomino romping off the dirt roads of Mexico during the recently-concluded Rally Mexico. It’s a ten-minute piece so sit back, relax, and enjoy the bumpy ride…err…clip.
There’s nothing like a trip to memory lane that brings back nostalgic moments from the past.
For Walter Röhrl, a man many regard as the finest rally car driver in history, there may be such a thing as too many memory lanes to choose from. So Autocar did him a great service by picking one particular event his past: the 1984 Rally Monte Carlo.
If you were old enough to have seen it, you’ll probably remember Röhrl winning that race on-board an Audi Quattro. What Autocar then decided to do was bring Röhrl back to his scene of conquest 26 years later on with the same race car – the A2 Quattro – and in the same scenic leg of the Rally Monte Carlo – the Col de Turini.
Check out how Röhrl fared this time around and watch first-hand exactly why this man was bestowed the title of Rally Driver of the Century in Italy and
Rally Driver of the Millennium in France.
Ken Block’s 2010 World Rally Championship season at the Rally Mexico got off to an impressive start – that is until, it ended sooner than he and co-pilot Alex Gelsomino would have liked.
Block and Gelsomino ended up crashing out of the race when he shot wide on one of the gravel corners forcing his Rally Ford Fiesta into getting beached at a slightly awkward tilted position. It was a disappointing end to an otherwise impressive race, one where Block was consistently in the top 10 and moving in and out of the top 5 until his slight miscalculation.
Afterwards, Block admitted that the crash was his fault, attributing to a rookie mistake of slightly miscalculating the braking into the tight corner and realizing his blunder just a tad too late. While we’re a little disappointed too, we’re going to give Block a little benefit of the doubt and hope that he puts this ‘rookie mistake’ to good use and doesn’t do it again.
Check out the video and watch how Ken Block’s Rally Mexico race ended prematurely.
Ken Block’s Rally American season got off on a wrong foot after he failed to even make it to the finish line in the season’s inaugural race but if his past performances at the 100 Acre Woods Rally are any indication, you could say that Block will bounce back rather nicely in the next race.
The American rally car is aiming to bag his fifth victory at the event this weekend and this video of him dusting off his new Ford Fiesta Moster World Rally with navigator Alex Gelsmino - he’s a chatty fellow, isn’t he? - at a ranch near 100 Acre Woods shows that he‘s about as ready as ready can be to get down and dirty over muddy gravel this weekend.
