By Brian Lohnes

BangShift.com

The 1933 Ford Phaeton of Tammy Ray has been awarded the 2010 Ridler Award at the Detroit Autorama. The award, one of the most coveted in the world of hot rod building was bestowed on the car after deliberation from the judges on all of the “Great 8″ nominees.

Congrats to T&T Customs, who built the car, and to Tammy Ray. All eight of the “Great 8″ field, including the winner, can be seen in this gallery.

By Brian Lohnes

BangShift.com

Watching this video will make you really want a deuce and a half truck. It will also serve as a good base for the guaranteed argument you’ll have with your spouse when you share that idea. Clearly this truck is a useful piece of equipment to have around the house. They’re great at lots of stuff, like knocking down pools. To be clear, the pool is still full of water.

By Brian Lohnes

BangShift.com

What kind of lunatic builds an all-aluminum 511ci Ford FE engine and plugs it into a huge, lifted 4×4 truck for the purposes of drag racing it? A BangShift.com approved lunatic, that’s who! As you’ll see in the video, this truck has big slicks mounted on all four corners and it sounds totally awesome.

Oh yeah, it goes like stink too. 6.90s in the eighth-mile is moving for this large hunk of Ford. Dig the strip as well. Hypoxia Dragway in Wyoming is as low key and stripped down as they come, and it claims to be the strip at the highest elevation in the USA at 6,600 feet, making the Ford even more impressive. We love it.

F250 goes 6.97 at 99.7 mph in 1/8 mile

By Brian Lohnes

BangShift.com

When we heard that 2010 Cobra Jet #27 (of 50) was at Tube Chassis Designz for the installation of a parachute, we dropped everything and headed over to check out the car. The 2010 edition of the Mustang Cobra Jet has several mechanical improvements over 2008s, and in our eyes, is the coolest freaking thing any domestic manufacturer currently sells. It is an 8-second car that arrives ‘caged and turn-key from Ford. Add that to the fact that this one happens be to owned and raced by the dealership that invented the 1968 Cobra Jet, and you’ve got even more magic happening.

Carl Tasca currently holds the record for 2008 CJ’s with a 9.28/141 mph run. This car is capable of doing that right out of the box. Why? For starters the motor is topped with a 4.0L Whipple blower. That’s a 4.0L blower on top of a 5.4L engine. Boost a-plenty! This car is equipped with a 5-speed Liberty transmission, as opposed to the 4-speed in the 2008 models, there has also been weight reduction with a ‘glass hood, and this car is equipped with the Super Cobra Jet motor which is all aluminum. Base CJ’s have an iron block.

This car is rated for 475 hp from Ford. If you believe that we have oceanfront property in Oklahoma to sell you. The reason this car is at the shop right now is so that it can be modified for a parachute. It’ll need the ‘chute to comply with the rules once it touches the 8-second zone, which, knowing the guys at Tasca, will be pretty freaking quickly.

Hit the link below to take a tour of the new CJ, the latest in a revived factory drag program from Ford that rules all.

Click here for the BangShift.com Photo Gallery of Carl Tasca’s 2010 Cobra Jet Mustang

By Brian Lohnes

BangShift.com

We’ll admit right off the bat that we have beaten down a U-Haul truck or two in our day. We got a V10 powered model high sided on a pile of tires one time. It’s kind of a long story, but let’s just say that the rev limiter on that truck got used really well. The videos in this Bonanza take it to another level. This is pure rental truck violence. BangShift.com does not endorse or encourage this behavior, but since these hoons did it, we may as well enjoy it.

See more U-Haul videos at BangShift.com, including a 17 foot Ford powered box truck getting neutral dropped into a good burnout.

U-Haul Box Truck Burnout

By Brian Lohnes

BangShift.com

It’s the ultimate drag racing party foul, running over the Christmas tree. Aside from being rare and usually pretty spectacular, it is a major pain in the ass for the track personnel. Once the tree gets wiped out, all the glass from the light bulbs needs to be cleaned off the track and if there was damage done to the electrical hook-ups, it can take hours to get another tree working properly. These guys pulled the ultimate whoopsie doodle.

Stuff happens, but to hit it on a Harley? Happy viewing.

Continue reading "Hitting the Christmas Tree" »

By Brian Lohnes

BangShift.com

Icelandic hillclimb racers must hate gravity. There’s just no other way to explain why they attempt to race their tube chassis Jeeps and trucks up near vertical cliff faces, often with disastrous results. Big blocks, lots of nitrous, paddle tires, and miles of steel tubing make this a BangShift.com approved motorsport. The fact that disaster can strike anywhere from the hit of the throttle to within feet of the mountain top finishline, makes it riveting to watch.

The hillclimb moniker fails to tell the whole story on this group of crazies though. As you’ll see in the video below, they also skip these things across the water like flat stones and mud bog them through Icelandic swamps.

We’ve seen lots of videos of dirt hill climbs and even the serious stuff like the Big Eliminator at Gravelrama, but in comparison the Icelandic racers, it is weak sauce. One of the things that we really like about this video is the fact that screaming big blocks can be heard loud and clear.

Horsepower knows no language boundaries!

By Brian Lohnes

BangShift.com

Man alive! When we first watched this video of a Competition Eliminator car running in Oslo, Norway, we rubbed our eyes and watched again. Sporting a 297ci Ford motor, a tach that starts at 6,000 rpm, and a driver that can really row the Liberty 5-speed, this Ford Probe is off the charts awesome. Hell, the guy takes the car to 10,000 rpm during the burnout!

We hunted around for some photos of the outside of the car and it seems like this was once a Motorcraft sponsored entry, judging from the paint scheme. Either that or the owner is a big Ford nut and decided to paint his car like one of the Motorcraft schemed machines in tribute. Who gives a crap about the paint anyway?

Listen to the all-out fury that this little motor screams all the way down the track. The clutch is dumped at 10,000 and the needle goes over center more than a little during the lap so we’re thinking that 11,000 rpm is being realized at the finish line when the shift light is hopelessly pleading for another gear.

BangShifting is international, this video rules.

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 Brian Lohnes

BangShift.com

Over the last year or so, we’ve not only been introduced to the coolness that is an airport limo, we’ve also begun to really dig them. We got tipped off to this totally neato 1973 Checker model and we want to justify the purchase to our significant other. Anyone got any good reasoning in their back pocket?

This particular one needs brake work, but that should be no sweat. Checkers were known for lots of stuff but the high points were a lack of styling changes (we think they look awesome, who wouldn’t want to buy a 1950s look car in the 1970s?) and their near indestructible nature.

The reason that these cars became famous for being taxi cabs was not for their comfy interiors, it was because they would run for ages with minimal maintenance and upkeep. The company ran its own motors for a while but we’re close to 100% certain this car, being made in 1973, would be powered by a small block chevy.

You and 12 of your friends could roll in style with this car. We call shotgun! Thanks to BangShift.com member IRONHEAD for the tip! Check out the 1973 Checker Aerobus 8-door Limo on eBay!