By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

Today’s pic comes from Miguel’s Jeep Rubicon ride page. Keep those photo of the day PMs and e-mails coming!

By Brian Lohnes

BangShift.com

Talk about grassroots racing. Take an open area, throw some huge old equipment tires around the edges and center of said area, form an oval about a quarter mile in length, and allow people to race big rigs around it. Where the hell do we sign up? This is friggin’ awesome.

There a full size rigs, medium duty trucks, day cabs and sleepers, all banging benders and sliding around the corners in this wild contest. Make sure to watch both parts!

Continue reading "Hilarious Video: a Crazy, Dirt Track, Big Rig Race at the Webster County Fair" »

By Ben Schaffer

The Real JDM

Today I saw the following upsetting news from Ralliart Japan. The letter essentially says that Ralliart is suffering from slow sales and that they can no longer continue many divisions of their company. Most notably to us Ralliart fans is the fact that they are shutting down their product line. That means no more production of Ralliart tuning parts and no new parts development.

Some might blame the economy (as Ralliart did in a general diagnosis for their winding down operations)…but having seen how many knockoffs of Ralliart parts have been marketed to the Evo communities over the past decade it does not surprise me that their sales have been down to the point where they need to shut down operations. Companies in Japan rely heavily on international distribution to survive when the Japanese domestic economy slows down as it has. Having handled some sales for Ralliart in North America I can understand just how very few parts were actually sold in the US due to the most desired items such as front carbon lip spoilers being quickly knocked off. I’m not saying that knockoffs killed Ralliart, but it surely did have an impact in times like now where Japanese domestic sports car tuning and spending has slowed and the companies are dependent on export sales to remain in business.

I’d like to leave this post with a clip which is quite memorable for me. For those of you lucky enough to have seen this movie, its one of the very few impressive showcases of JDM tuning. Enjoy Jackie Chan working at Ralliart and racing an Evo III in this clip from Thunderbolt!

By Dan Strohl

Hemmings

While we were in Long Beach, waiting for our ship to come in, we strolled past the city’s convention center where we came upon some sort of comic-con, or more accurately, a set of TV and movie cars helping to promote the comic-con. I’d seen the Obi-Shawn Del Sol around the Internet before, so it was kinda neat to see it in person. As to the provenance of the rest, I couldn’t tell, nor did I ask. See more pics at Hemmings

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

My friend Jim calls this a shot an “R-rated, ski-bum ghetto-white-trash version of Where’s Waldo.” Click here here to see the complete, gigantically blown-up 12mb panorama that reveals every detail of every vehicle on the lot, as well as a variety of characters–Jim claims there’s an abandoned child, a topless woman, and a guy taking a piss, but I’m pretty sure he’s just trying to make you look. I spied a vintage Airstream, a box of Coors Light, something that looked like an inflatable date left out in the rain for a few days, and Jim’s own moldering 318-powered RV, a dead ringer for the mobile meth lab I photographed on Aurora a few weeks back. Anyway, it’s your turn: have at it!

By John Coyle

Deputy Editor

During the height of the dot com boom, I lived right around the corner from a bar that had a two-player version of Sega Super GT. And there were many, many nights when I’d come home burned out from a 12-hour day staring at my machine, head there and wind up pumping an entire roll of quarters into it. So as impressed as I am with the new racing games like Forza 3 and Gran Turismo, I’ve never bought an X-Box or a PlayStation. I know myself, and I know that as much as I like virtual racing, I also like to do things like have friends, eat things that aren’t delivered, go out with girls and see the sun. But if I came home and suddenly found this F1 simulator chair in my living room, I would probably forget about those things. It tilts to simulate G-forces and everything. Keep this incredible piece of awesomeness out of my house. Please.

Formula 1 – Simulator

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

Korean artist Ji Yong Ho’s weird tire sculptures have been making the rounds for at least a couple of years now, but they sure are new to me. I love how he uses the recycled treads to create the textures of skin, scales, and shaggy fur on his lifelike creatures. See more below the jump, and check out his bio here.

Continue reading "Tire Mutants!" »

By Fireball Tim

Movie Car Design Master

After seeing this car in the new trailer, I’m gonna be first in line. Bring it. All photos HERE.

By Tony Castellano

Tcassa

A small but determined group of gearheads braved the wild weather and displayed their American beauties right in the heart of Melbourne this past weekend. A good mixture of old and new American iron was on show, with my favorite being this spotless ’68 Camaro. More pics after the jump!

Continue reading "American Muscle At Its Finest" »

By Michael Berenis

Tampa Sports Car Examiner

Sometimes hitting the NOS too soon can cause nasty results. This late model Ford Mustang suffered the consequences from pre-NOS’ing, but question here is did he really need to hit the NOS racing against a Durango? Lesson learned. Read more about the hotness at Tampa Sports Car Examiner.

Mustang Blows Up