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“This technology is completely untapped,” Joe Napoleon said of the eerily quiet all-electric but blindingly quick Chevrolet Camaro EL1. “Everybody talks about it. Nobody does shit about it. We’re going to go debunk all the myths.”
When the all-time fastest car around the Nürburgring is a hybrid, there’s no excuse to still think “hybrid” means “slow.” But there’s a reason why even major manufacturers struggle to put electric-assisted cars on the market. Home-tinkerer Matt Brown (with a NASCAR team and Tesla on his resume) figured out a way to make his own hybrid system for extra speed, yet his CBR1000RR-swapped 1964 Honda S600 proved that adding hybrid power still isn’t exactly simple.
Alfonso Garcia Jr.’s plastic fantastic 1992 Saturn SL2 chop-top hot rod proves any car can be cool, and that you don’t need a big budget to build something amazing if you’ve got patience and determination.
We’re all familiar with the 900-horsepower Reliant Robins that can come out of driving games’ “tuning” options, but can you transform an unlikely vehicle into a track monster in real life? That’s what three friends want to find out with the Range Rover they bought “after a drunken night of Gran Turismo,” according to Charlie Foley’s build thread on PistonHeads. It’s delightful.
While some of you were cowering away from last week’s polar vortex, one pair of cousins was driving straight into it in a lovingly crafted replica of the burnt-out rental car from the movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Just like in the movie, there was no fabric top left to protect them from nature’s worst.
When people build a race car, they usually start off with a car. Not a rusty, wrecked heap of bolts that’s roughly in the shape of a 1950 Dodge Pickup. Putting it together in a couple weeks after the rest of your original team abandons the idea is pure lunacy. Continuing to race it after that? Congratulations! You’re our kind of maniac.
If you want a fast wagon in the United States, bless your heart. Americans love bloated crossovers and trucks, but never were deemed worthy of the subversive joy of a quick longroof. If you can’t wait for other countries’ leftovers to pass the 25-year import rule, never fear! You can make your own S4 Avant out of two Audis.
The Honda S2000 routinely hits “modern classic” lists thanks to its high-revving screamer of an engine. Swapping the engine for anything else earns you a strong side-eye from Honda fans, yet that’s what makes this electric-swapped 2006 S2000 so wonderfully enticing—not to mention ridiculously fast.
People pay absurd prices for Porsche restomods, but too often, those pricey, perfect cars languish away in sad collections, only coming out to park at Cars and Coffee. You don’t want that. You want a Porsche “reimagined” by a self-proclaimed redneck instead, complete with a mid-engine LS3 swap from a Cadillac Escalade. Burnouts all day!
Nathan Churchel has always looked for ways to make his 1984 Nissan 300ZX Turbo stand out, as merely being the second person he knew of to swap in the massive VH45DE V8 from an Infiniti Q45 wasn’t enough. He gave the car a truly apocalypse-ready metal widebody, and was one of the showstoppers at Radwood Philly.
For years, I have been meh about the LS swap. General Motors’ ubiquitous V8 engine fits almost anywhere! It makes a lot of power! I know, I know. But it’s so common. It is the “live, laugh, love” of engine swaps, my dudes. It is as basic as pumpkin spice. I got bored of hearing about them.
At Rennsport Reunion, an event full of every conceivable mind-blowing Porsche that you can think of, one car upstaged them all. It wasn’t an ex-Le Mans car, a shop build funded by an unlimited pocketbook, or even a Paris-Dakar racer. It was this rowdy, dirty, lifted 1974 911 Targa with the fenders sawzalled off that competes in off-road racing. It wasn’t even racing at Rennsport and it won the weekend.
Somewhere inside Porsche must be a secret directive to race everything they make. Someone has to race the Porsche—or else it is no Porsche. We’ve seen everything from rally Cayennes to Panamera touring cars, and now, at last, I got to watch Porsche tractors race on Laguna Seca. Yes, tractors. I even got to drive one after the race to see how it worked! My life is now complete.
Anybody who tells you that you have to enlist a pricey automotive shop to restore a basket-case car is a fool. Casey Madrick picked up one of the most beloved driver’s cars of all time—a 1976 BMW 2002—and restored it himself at home using everything from old Volvo parts to a tree stump in the process. It’s a car too good to give up on, so it’s worth getting creative to fix it.
Scott Leone’s 1992 Toyota MR2 Turbo ought to be the ultimate cautionary tale about Craigslist trades. He thought he was getting a perfect, no-problem car. But when it turned out to be a basket case, Leone didn’t scrap it. He brought this MR2 back to life using a more powerful V6 engine that the car always deserved. The end result is one of the best things I’ve driven all year.
I come before you, oh readers, as I stare down a pile of laundry that includes way too many Porsche shirts and a large bag to pack. I am off to Rennsport Reunion VI, Porsche’s gathering of its most significant race cars and other vehicles. There is even a tractor race. I leave tomorrow. I will not sleep tonight.
The best cars are the ones that get used. Driven. Hooned. Appreciated as the functional objects that they are. That’s why it’s impossible to look at Luis Millan’s well-loved turbo widebody 1990 Mazda Miata and not smile a little. This is how you do track cars right, and importantly, how to do it on a budget like a boss.
We all know parents who sacrificed their sports car the moment kids entered their life, but John Dore wasn’t ready to give up on owning one of the coolest cars ever made: a DeLorean DMC-12. Instead he completely reconfigured the rear of his DeLorean to include a backseat so the kids could enjoy it, too. If that’s not peak Dad skills, I don’t know what is.
NASCAR’s Dale Earnhardt Jr. retired last year after struggling to return from a concussion in 2016. Now he has an upcoming book about the experience, and he’s finally opening up about his experiences with concussions over the year, highlighting the heartbreaking worries and lack of support drivers encounter when they have a brain injury on the job.
Building a car from scratch in your basement is hard enough to make you a bit of a hero to the rest of us. Going off-plan to completely re-engineer the design of the car, adding a turbo and doing all your own carbon fiber work is the stuff of legends. Meet Jon Frecks, whose home-built Lotus Seven replica rules hard.
The 2018 Nissan Titan may be one of the most clever pickups I’ve ever driven. Between the numerous bins inside to the integrated tie-downs in the bed, the truck actually makes good use of its enormous size.
Lars Wolfe wanted his new race car to be able to do a little bit of everything: rally, road racing and whatever else potentially tickled his fancy. But he also wanted to stand out, so naturally, he bought one of the weirdest cars in recent history: a 2013 Nissan Juke. Here’s how a cute grocery getter became a manual-swapped off-road beast.
Say you joined the so-called Bongard Club—named such for the tow company that hauls your busted car away if you eat it on the Nürburgring in spectacular fashion—and you’re rushed to the hospital in nearby Adenau, Germany. Good news! There’s a track map on the ceiling (complete with corner names) just in case you need it.
Toyota Yaris driver Ott Tänak dominated this weekend’s Rallye Deutschland after a hard fight for the overall lead with former teammate Sébastien Ogier, now at Ford. I was there, and, if I’m honest, I’m a little disappointed that I didn’t get to help shove a car back on the road.
A new Porsche race car is hardly news when it goes to the track. They have to do absurd things like break 35-year-old Nürburgring records to get our attention. Now, when a Porsche is built for off the track—that’s special. The rally Porsche Cayman GT4 Clubsport was the true highlight of Rallye Deutschland, and it wasn’t technically even racing.
Graham Blyth suffered the ultimate heartbreak: He lost his entire garage after his 1989 Alfa Romeo Milano Verde caught fire while trying to diagnose an ignition issue. Instead of shunning Alfas forever, Blyth bought another Milano Verde less than two months after the fire, and completely rebuilt it to (hopefully!) avoid repeating the last one’s fate.
Believe it or not, I have never been to a stage rally. I’m all but surrounded by various drivers and codrivers, but I haven’t seen them rally. Naturally, my first trip to a rally should be a full World Rally Championship round. That’s why I’m finally here at Rallye Deutschland. I want to see loud cars shoot flames and fly.
