By David Wallens

Grassroots Motorsports

Anyone need some free tools and restoration equipment? We’re giving away a $1000 Eastwood shopping spree to one lucky soul. You can enter at Classic Motorsports

By Antonio Alvendia

Antonio Alvendia

About an hour and a half north of Los Angeles lies El Mirage, a historic dry lake bed that has been a home to land speed racing andthe organization that hosts these land speed racing events, the Southern California Timing Association (SCTA) for over 60 years. Just think about it – sixty years! That’s a long time. Even though it is only about 1.5 hours from where I live and I’ve known about El Mirage for years, I had never actually been to El Mirage until this past weekend.

For me, the journey to El Mirage was something like a time warp. We had to drive through the high desert of the Antelope Valley, and eventually began noticing lots of old homes and old buildings… not to mention ghost-town looking businesses that look like they haven’t seen a customer walk through their doors in a decade.

On Sunday, Travis and I decided to drive our Nissan Cube press vehicle up to El Mirage to check out the scene and see what it was all about. On the way to the legendary dry lake bed, we stopped off at this liquor store/gas station for drinks, and were happy to find an old Ford hot rod parked outside at the gas pump. I approached the owner of the car, a gentleman named Dave, and said hello while he was refueling his hot rod with a funnel, as the gas station’s modern style gas nozzles wouldn’t be long or slender enough to get the entire neck of the fuel nozzle into the vintage gas tank without spilling onto the side of his old Ford. Continue reading and view more photos at MotorMavens!

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

Here’s the star of that IIHS video, purchased for $8,500 according to the guys over at The Truth About Cars. I’ve seen a lot of comments about what appears to be rust swirling around in the video (a saw another comment that claimed that it was in fact the road silt and dust that collects in the frame rails and rockers on these old cars over the years). There were also questions about whether the motor was pulled (some folks pointed out that the straight six in this model was relatively narrow, leaving next to nothing between the front end of the Bel Air and the passenger compartment). And then there were tons on questions about whether the ’59 Bel Air in particular was selected cause the IIHS knew that old X-frame would fold up so nicely (and the fact that it was a four door makes it even more susceptible). Check out this video response on YouTube. Anyway, next time let’s see a 60s Imperial take on a Prius.

By John Coyle

Deputy Editor

Back in October of last year, Rob got invited to go drive the Tesla Roadster, and he was pretty impressed with the little electric hot rod. So I’ve been keeping an eye on the space designated for Tesla’s Seattle dealership—it’s right on my way into the office—for the past few months, and I’m happy to report that it’s open for business! Obviously, there’s a burly waiting list, and there’s still construction going on in the future service area, but I was really pumped to see a  brick-and-mortar representation of this company on my home turf. Hit the jump for a shot of the front of the building.

Continue reading "Tesla Seattle Open For Business!" »

By John Naderi

StreetFire.net

See this van? Epic, eh? It was built as a rolling promotional tool for NationofGO.com. We tried something like this to promote StreetFire but our budget only allowed for a clapped-out ice cream truck, which oddly enough, gave off more of a chester vibe. To this day I don’t understand why it didn’t work; we even gave out free candy. Enough of our misconstrued marketing attempts, this post is about the Nation of GO. You might be wondering who exactly is the Nation of GO. Well… you are. Hit that jump to read more. And don’t worry we won’t be offering candy this time.

Continue reading "Won't You Make a GO Nation?" »

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

Here’s the third EcoBoost motor from Ford, joining the current the 3.5-liter V6 and the recently-announced 2.0-liter EcoBoost. The 1.6 and 2.0-liter turbo direct-injected I-4s are expected to get 20% better gas mileage than the larger, naturally aspirated engines they are set to replace next year. This little 1.6 is expected to put out around 180 horsepower and 170-175 lb-ft of torque. More at Autoblog

By John Coyle

Deputy Editor

So over the past couple of weeks, we’ve been screwing around with CarDomain, which is why you may have noticed that the homepage hadn’t changed at all. Well, after approximately a case and a half of High Life tall boys and reams upon reams of expletives, I’ve finally figured out how to update it. So what does that have to do with this week’s winner? Absolutely nothing. But I figured you guys might be curious. So let’s move on to the business at hand. This week’s winner is moparornocarman, who came up with; “Hello, OnStar? My trunk monkey is malfunctioning, please send assistance.” Congrats man! Tune in tomorrow for the next installment of our savagely popular Caption Contest!

By David Wallens

Grassroots Motorsports

All work and no play makes David a dull boy, and soon I’m heading to a NASA track event. Ever wanted to get on track but didn’t know the first step to take? Their HPDE program is a fantastic way to get involved. Plus it’s fun, too. You can learn more about my low-buck track car at Grassroots Motorsports

By Brian Lohnes

BangShift.com

In case you haven’t noticed, we’re big fans of dumb fun around here. The guys in this video are as well. They have a 1995 Caprice that is backfiring through the exhaust. The guys determined that the backfires are being caused by the cat converters breaking up. Whatever the cause, they sound like gunshots. Then there’s the flame part.

This Caprice makes Uncle Buck’s car sound like a BB gun.

By Ben Schaffer

The Real JDM

With all news being GT-R related around here lately, today I looked for something as far opposite as possible to post. So here we go, a customer car of the most unique kind…a UKDM widebody Range Rover Sport! And not a GT-R. Check.

This is a cool story to me and is something I think a lot of readers can relate to that are in my age bracket. My client Rob started working with me almost five years ago on his Honda S2000. Over the years we worked together and he ended up putting together one of the cleanest and nicest S2000s I’ve still ever seen. It is absolutely a flawlessly executed street car build, top notch 100% (another post will come on that). Continue reading at The Real JDM