By Brian Lohnes

BangShift.com

With our East Coast offices in the beginning stages of a horrific heat wave, it was only natural that we’d seek out some good old fashioned fire action. We got our fix with this footage of an Isuzu truck bodied mud bogging machine that is running at full tilt and going nowhere in a deep pit of slop.

Something majorly bad happened and either the engine blew apart sending oil onto the headers or the transmission ‘sploded sending ATF onto the headers, but either way, things flare up quick for the driver of the truck. He appears to have been wearing an SFI approved t-shirt and jeans. Yeah, he’s lucky this wasn’t worse.

By Brian Lohnes

BangShift.com

It was a big weekend for retro events! In the East there was the National Hot Rod Reunion, and our West was the 46th Annual L.A. Roadsters Fathers Day show at Fairplex in Pomona, California. The L.A. Roadsters club has been around since 1957 and is only for 1936 and older cars, but the show is usually jam-packed with retro cars of all kinds. And we’ve got the event coverage. Click here for 300-plus photos from the 2010 LA Roadsters Show!

By Brian Lohnes

BangShift.com

This vintage drag racing video takes us to Texas in the 1970s. The race is being held at Hallsville Drag Strip, which is still under operation but now called Hallsville Dragway. As you’d expect, things are a little more modernized now than they were in the days when this video was taken.

There’s something beyond cool about a bare bones strip and Hallsville certainly qualified for that status in this era. Initially we thought it was an eighth mile track but research has shown that it was and is a quarter-mile affair.

By Brian Lohnes

BangShift.com

BangShift.com is proud to announce that we will be providing free wall to wall streaming video from the 2010 Holley NHRA National Hot Rod Reunion, June 18-20, at Beech Bend Raceway in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The race will feature everything from the Mopar Hemi Challenge, to Nostalgia front engine fuel dragsters, Funny Cars, Fuel Altereds, and the incredible Cacklefest. We’ll be there, broadcasting live, for every second of it!

As we’ve done at the March Meet, California Hot Rod Reunion, and West Coast Hot Rod Association races, we’ll bring great live footage of the action from the second it starts right through the end on Sunday evening. Continue reading at Bangshift.com

By Brian Lohnes

BangShift.com

We’ve made it clear in the past that we find few things more awesome than street driven cars with planetary transmissions like Lencos and Jeffcos. We’d be lying if we knew the intricate differences between the Lenco and the Jeffco, and frankly we don’t care. Watch this video of guy grabbing shift levers and laying rubber in his car and tell us you don’t want one too.

The car is insane, as you can tell when he leans into it and the guy running the camera nearly craps his pants. Seeing all those awesome levers coming up through the floor gives us the chills. Your race prepped ‘Glide ain’t got spit on this!

By Brian Lohnes

BangShift.com

Well this may have sobered her up. A suspected drunk driver in Dallas, Texas, launched her car over a set of toll booths at the DFW Airport when she failed to slow down and pay the toll. We can only imagine what was going through the heads of the other drivers as the car entered low Earth orbit.

The launch video below is nuts, and it is truly amazing that the woman lived through the experience. You can click here to see the entire police report and details on the driver, Yasmine Villasana’s awful story as to what caused the accident. She ended up with a broken wrist. The Chevy Impala she was driving ended up as molten scrap.

By Brian Lohnes

BangShift.com

Let’s head to Michigan to see school buses hauling their considerable asses around an asphalt oval track. This is a decent sized place. The track measures 7/16 of a mile and has some really stout banking in the corners. All this leads up to the buses (after a lap or two) getting a scary good head of steam around the track. Stick around to the end so you don’t miss the really good carnage.

By Brian Lohnes

BangShift.com

In what has to be the least shocking rumor regarding the closing of an automotive brand, Ford seem to be getting ready to close down Mercury for good. Making up only about 6% of Ford’s sales and having zero identity of its own, Mercury’s time has come. Mercury has really lacked any sort of individual personality for more than 20 years. Any residual sales coming from owners who had a loyalty to Mercury have pretty much dried up.

There have been more than a few BangShift approved Mercs produced over the years and the legacy of the brand amongst car enthusiasts will live a long life. There is no more quintessential tail dragger than an early 1950s Mercury and the fact that the Comet had such an integral part in the evolution and amazing popularity explosion of the Funny Car will never be lost.

For us, there is none of the teeth gnashing, stomach turning, angst that came with the news of Pontiac being zapped. There was still some life left in Pontiac, but Mercury is a dead man walking, both literally and figuratively.

Mercury is the latest in a long line of brands which were doomed decades ago by “badge engineering” and hideous corporate decision making.

Source — NYTimes.com — Dealers Brace for Ford to Phase Out Mercury

By Brian Lohnes

BangShift.com

We’ll start with the punchline. According to the Associated Press, neither driver in this massive collision was hurt. We can’ t fathom how that is possible because the impact looks like someone detonating a nuclear device, but we’re glad that it’s true. This is explosion quality that is normally only seen in Jerry Bruckheimer movies. How the dump truck managed to amble across a highway and directly in front of an 18-wheeler gathering steam to merge onto said highway is beyond us, but it happened. Pay attention to the upper left corner of the camera shot. This kids, is impressive stuff…

Raw Video: Texas Crash Creates Fireball

By Brian Lohnes

BangShift.com

Apparently the 2010 Goodguys Orange County (California) Get-Together was a huge deal. Our intrepid Chad Reynolds was manning the mic at the Ridetech Street Challenge Autocross all weekend, plus he sent in a photo gallery of nearly 350 of the best carsat the show, inside and out.

He was too busy to shoot the Autocross itself, but told us that the annual Editor’s Challenge was great. Each magazine or online editor got to to take one lap in a Chevy, one in a Ford, and one in Mopar (a rented new Challenger). Nick Licata of Camaro Performers took the win with Jeff Smith of Car Craft coming in second place by mere fractions of a second.

Click here to see the BangShift.com gallery of the 2010 Goodguys Orange County Get-Together