By John Coyle

Deputy Editor

Matt Farah from the Smoking Tire saw this murdered out Evo X at a recent Cars and Coffee—and its owner Russ actually invited him to drive it. In case you were wondering, good things happen when you have a camera crew. Anyway, the Evo was stock for a whole week before Russ took it to Road Race Engineering, who added some trick suspension bits and started tuning the motor. This black beauty is currently putting down almost twice the horsepower it was in factory form, so as you can imagine, it’s damn quick. But before Russ handed it over to Matt, he wanted to demonstrate just how quick by overtaking a a Porsche 996 Cup Car. And everything went exactly as planned. Yup, it was a totally textbook shoot…

By Dan Strohl

Hemmings

I wonder if the seller of this 1973 AMC Matador cop car chose that photo location on purpose? Was he just looking for an appropriately gritty background in an attempt to emulate Los Angeles? Is he making commentary on AMC’s traditional underdog status and correlating that to an inability to keep the peace? Is he trying to juxtapose a symbol of law and order against a symbol of lawlessness in a statement on the futility to suppress human design? Continue reading at Hemmings…

By Brian Lohnes

BangShift.com

Here’s the improbable story of a 1974 Baldwin-Motion Phase III Camaro that has lived its entire life in Tehran, Iran. The car was built new by Joel Rosen and the guys at Motion Performance for a wealthy automotive enthusiast. The car survived the 1979 revolution and subsequent lockdown the country has been in seemingly ever since. It is now being restored by a group that is preserving the car collection of the late-Shah.

The car has lived an interesting life for sure and we’d venture to guess that it was and still may be the most bad ass street machine in Iran (and yes, we think it is just as odd to type that as it was for you to read it). The Phase III was a heavy breathing package which was based around a 454ci, 9:1 compression big block that wore ZL/X open chamber heads, an Edelbrock intake manifold, an 850-cfm Holley carb, and large diameter headers. Continue reading at BangShift.com…

By Speedhunters

Car Culture At Large

Anniversaries, even significant ones, can often times come and go unnoticed by husbands and boyfriends the world over—apparently there is something lodged in our brains that makes us forget these dates! In 2009 however, there was one date on the calendar that gave these unlucky lads cause to celebrate.

See, a few months ago, two guys set out to organise a national cruise to honour the vehicles they love and cherish – the R34 GT-R. Terry Tung-yep and Eugene Chan had thought long and hard about how it was going to come to life, and when Terry asked for my assistance with the matter, I was only too happy to help. Along the way we also wrangled Terry’s son, Matt, Shanil, Shehan, Rafael, and Vik to help organise what would truly be a historic event.

As the interest level in the event among forum members on Skylines Australia and various workshops grew, we quickly realised that this couldn’t just be a run-of-the-mill cruise. It would have to be special, one of a kind, unique – more was needed.

Magazines were contacted to cover the event and this is when things started getting big! Jason Round, the editor of Performance Imports Magazine, agreed to send a photographer to cover the event. He then got his good friend and Skyline owner Adrian, from Boost Magazine, involved and he was more than happy to come out to the event.  Continue reading at Speedhunters…

—by Nick Galvin

By Jim Brennan

UDMan

Looking for more than just any old station wagon to haul home the groceries from your local Whole Foods? Then here’s your ride: A one-off ’50s Mercedes-Benz station wagon. This vision was probably a bit different in 1956 for Mrs. Caroline Folke, a woman of apparent means (with homes in Paris, Manhattan, and Palm Beach) for whom a top-of-the-line Chrysler, Mercury, or Buick station wagon would simply not suffice. Back when nearly everyone liked Ike, she walked into the New York City Mercedes-Benz dealership with a most unusual request: a brand new Mercedes-Benz station wagon. At the time, Mercedes-Benz was re-establishing itself in the automobile business. It was just 11 years after the end of the Second World War, after all. They were apparently eager to fill her unusual request—even though station wagons were not part of the Mercedes-Benz model range in 1956. Read More at Automotive Traveler!

By Motorator.com

Motorator.com

The guys from StopTech brakes came by the CarCast garage to show off their Porsche Carrera GT. How do you start a Carrera GT when you forget to connect the trickle battery charger overnight, you get Adam Carolla and the Professor Sandy Ganz to push start it for you. Check out this behind-the-scenes footage from an upcoming episode of Adam Carolla’s CarCast.

By Mike Musto

RideLust.com

1. The Blues Brothers: 1980

1974 Dodge Monaco

“It’s got a cop motor, a 440-cubic-inch plant. It’s got cop tires, cop suspension, cop shocks. It’s a model made before catalytic converters so it’ll run good on regular gas”

Believe it or not this car chase was one of the last really gritty car chases made. Oddly enough, this chase was actually supposed to be a spoof of what a great car chase should be and ended up being one of the best ones ever filmed. It also destroyed over 60 used police cars and made the “Bluesmobile” a movie icon. Here it is sped up a bit…

Check out the rest of my favorite 80s car chases over at RideLust.com

By Fireball Tim

Movie Car Design Master

I like the letter “D.” Maybe it’s because it reminds me of math class? Or the conversation I had with my counselor about the fact that if I don’t stop showing up at high school football games with a liter or gin hidden in my coat, I’ll end up getting “all D.”

But hey. There are good D’s, too. Jokes about Dingleberries. Dumbasses who think they know about cars. Cities like Denver, Dookervortski and Dunjab. Even foods like Double Vanilla Latte… Dang.

And then… there’s cars. Our cars. Cool Car. Damn cool cars. Behold… The D’s.

Continue reading "Fireball’s Alphabet of Awesomeness… The D’s" »

By Michael Berenis

Tampa Sports Car Examiner

Watch as this VW Golf takes a big healthy bite of curb. Read more at Tampa Sports Car Examiner.