by Zack K

These guys’ lack of shit-giving would decapitate that stupid honey badger. The picture above should give you an idea of how serious and awesome this video is. Not very and a very damn much. Formula D champ Chris Forsberg and a bunch of his crazy buddies got together and took over a racetrack with their mildly ratty but completely fun-as-shit drift cars. There’s no artsy shots, no game faces, no quick detail spray. What there is is 8 cars drifting around the entire compound (buildings, stands, the ticket booth) inches from each other. Animals were probably harmed in the making of this film. I love drifting, but I haven’t seen a video this fun and reckless in a while. This is what we would do if we had full access to a track (and real drifting talent) and just said “fuck it.”

It’s only the first part of the movie and they’ll probably space them out like an IV drip, keeping us happy through the winter. BloodMasters, if you’re listening, the TST crew approves and would love to have you at our next BBQ. We share your passion for automotive anarchism. Now enjoy the video below. Someone get me a denim vest.

Source: BloodMastersNJ

by Zack K

I’m nominating this video for best video ad of 2012. I know, it’s early. Hollywood does this when they roll out a piece of shit on January 2nd (“The best romantic comedy of the year!”) but when they do it, it’s because that movie will sink to last place in a matter of days and remain there for the rest of time. But this video, sponsored by ICON, GoPro and a littany of other performance companies, just fucking kills it. It’s the sequel to the original, spank-bank-worthy “Motorcycle vs Car Drift Battle” video that came out exactly one year ago. It featured Nick “APEX” Brocha sliding a stretched ZX10 around while an LS-powered RX-7 slid after him. I had never seen someone corner a bike like that, and it’s view count of over 4 million means neither had any of you.

This new video takes it up many notches. Nick is back, with his buddy Ernie Vigil. They take some Triumphs off the racetrack, into the hills of Washington. They’re riding is ridiculous, balancing a slippery rear wheel from turn to turn. But this time, there’s an addition, a “Smokey” played by drifter Dan Brockett. He chases down the 2-wheeled ruffians in the baddest cop car to date (Sorry, Gallardo), a Ford Mustang SVT Cobra. The combination of location, aerial shots, editing, driving, riding and execution is something fellow video nerds and non-blind people will unanimously love. It’s just sick. This is the best commercial since the Gymkhana series. Suck it, GEICO newt.  Ok, I can’t think anymore, I have to go watch it again. Make the jump, raise the resolution and grab a doughnut. Enjoy.

Source: Icon

World Rally Championship is one of the most exciting and difficult motorsports in the known universe, it’s been that way since it began. Despite Subaru pulling out and leaving a dead spot in my heart, there was plenty of clinical insanity to be watched. Ken Block flipping his car a dozen times, high-speed drifts through snow, Loeb, Raikkonen, Solberg and all the rest. ESPN put together a highlights reel for us, and it’s definitely worth the 8 minute attention span. I’m sure next year will be more of the same. The same being the best damn racing ever. Jump to watch it.

- Zack K

Drifting is one of those things that, like golf, bull riding, and porn, professionals make look very easy. It’s also something that many drivers claim to do well, when in fact, they do not. Since Matt is not a professional racing driver, he is more than willing to admit that he doesn’t have the first clue how to drift a car properly. But he’s also the first to admit that when you don’t know something, you get a professional to teach you, and you simply listen and try to be a good student.

The kind folks at the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving in Arizona offered The Smoking Tire the use of their facility and vehicles for a day of private drifting lessons from instructor Corey Hosford, who will be starting his Formula Drift career this coming April at Long Beach in his K-Sport Nissan 350Z. Can Matt start from nothing and become a drifter in just one day? Hit the jump to find out.

This is the newest car to be added to the TST Dream Garage. For those of you new to the game, we’re slowly compiling a list of all the cars we’d buy if we had money.  I mean so much money you’d buy one of those stupid, giant yachts that Paul Allen used to substitute his penis. If it’s a vehicle, we can put it on the wish list for the day we all simultaneously win every lottery in the US at once. And being added to that ever-expanding garage in the sky (Skycake made daily) is Vaughn Gittin Jr’s own, 1969 Need For Speed Mustang RTR-X. I ****ing love this car.

This car came out long ago, and it’s been on a tour since it debuted at SEMA in 2010. So you’ve probably seen it, heard of it or read about it. Nothing new. I’d read about it when it came out and thought it was awesome. But that didn’t prepare me for what I’d think when I saw it at Formula D this year at Irwindale. I rounded the corner  and stopped. (Earmuffs kids.) “Hoooo shit.” Make the jump to read my love story, and watch Gittin destroy some tires.

I love this car. I really truly do. Not in the way I love most of the fun power-laden cars that stop off at the office each week. I saw it in person and thought, “This is a car I dream to own. If I ever have the means, I will ask Mr. Gittin Jr permission to replicate it, using the same shops he did. Call me unoriginal, call it a rip-off.  I will care not. Not one bit.”It has a 480HP 5.0L Coyote motor, with some of the sickest, cleanest velocity stacks around. It’s a muscle car, but it has in-board suspension. Know what else has that? Le Mans prototype cars, or the Aston Martin One-77. It has sick diamond-pattern seats, awesome 5-spoke Work Meister wheels. And they’re green. And that is f*cking rock.

Besides all the good parts, power and speed (187MPH!) I love this car is because it combines two things that are very dear to me: Muscle cars and driving. Hot rods are what got me into cars. I used to go to tons of shows as a kid, worked on them before I could drive and owned a muscle car in high school. There’s a feeling they evoke that I haven’t found in other cars. It’s a feeling of power, confidence, and a slightly sinister-but-playful smile. It’s brawny and loud. Mothers look at you like you’ll turn their children into goblins. They’re cars for simply playing.

But they drove like shit. My car didn’t stop, it scraped it’s tires whenever it was forced to turn (mountain roads have never felt so exciting at 22MPH) and it was as nimble as a beached submarine. And when I would drive my friends’ MK1 VW Rabbit, complete with a 14-point cage and full track setup, I realized I was missing something essential. I liked turning. Stopping is a good thing. And if you’ve seen my silly audition for Octane Academy, you will know I have a clinical addiction to sliding cars. Give me any car on a slippery surface and I’m like Cartman at Klan rally buffet.

The RTR-X takes both of these things, essential elements to my very existence, and combines them. It’s a yin and yang of old and new, silly green wheels with a stealthy paint job. A racy digital cluster but with diamond pattern Alcantara. I love old cars and new cars, and this is the best combination of both I have ever seen. And the fact that it is capable of pro-level drifting is the final piece in the perfect car puzzle. I get my muscle car fix, my new technology fix, and my silly dorifto fix. This car is my definition of a good time. That’s all it was made for, and it pushes every button: childish, nostalgic,  irresponsible, adrenaline-seeking. It’s one of the coolest cars I’ve ever seen, it’s one of the best-looking one-offs I’ve seen, and god damn I bet it drives like m*********ing perfection. It’s sick, it’s nasty, it’s ridiculous and it can drive. That’s why it’s in the TST Dream Garage, and that’s why I would immediately steal it and never come back.

Bravo to Vaughn and NFS and all the guys that put this together. The concept was amazing, the art direction is so cool, and the detailed execution is incredible. And thanks to Hot Rod Magazine for filming this awesome video, and for teaching an 11 year old Zack how to box the frame of a  ’34 Ford. Not that I used them.

-Zack K

God Bless the Internet. Without it, I wouldn’t have access to hours of car news, be able to rapidly calculate torque figures, price conversions and I would still be wondering if anyone had ever thought of  having a superhero orgy, set at the Taj Mahal (someone did). And I also wouldn’t be able to see every single thing Jeremy Clarkson has ever written, starred in or hosted. “Illegal” Internet downloading convinced the BBC there just might be a small population of people in the USA that want to watch Top Gear (You’re welcome). And now it brings us a great clip from Clarkson’s newest holiday DVD, Powered Up. Make the jump to watch.

Every year Jeremy Clarkson makes a DVD that serves to placate us beasts the subsist on Top Gear. They’re just a smorgasbord of tire smoke, super cars and comparison that couldn’t find room on the TG season schedule. He does a few car comparisons in this DVD (Ferrari FF, 458, MP4-12C), but the best was saved for last: his favorite car of the year. Not the best car of the year, his favorite. It’s the BMW 1M, and it happens to be our favorite car of this year as well. We had a blast in the CTS-V. The ZR1 is the perfect tool for race tracks and scaring people camping in tunnels, but for sheer fun factor, its the 1M all the way. Performance, exclusivity and value are all there, but all we had to do is measure the smiles on our faces after each person drove it. It compels you to apex corners, it begs for downshifts and it’s as capable at high speed mile consumption as it is darting through corners. It’s just fantastic.

Watch Clarkson chuck the little M that could around, then check out our review of the 1M.

- Zack K

Oddball cars are the spice of life, well, at least my life anyway. I’m so flooded with car information most of the time, that a great portion of it just goes in one ear and out the other, because, honestly, I’ve seen it all before. Not this time. While most drift drivers are busy cranking up the boost on their 240′s, or converting econoboxes to rear-wheel-drive with NASCAR engines, Finnish drifter Teemu Peltola has gone a different direction: He built a 1981 Mercedes 300D Wagon into a drifter.

My last memory of such a car, with the exception of the W123 240D we reviewed on the old show, was being dropped off to school in the late 1980′s by my mother, who had a 1983 example. In fact, every mother on the block had one of these. In the 1980′s, this was the mommy-mobile. So it’s not surprising that seeing one now, 20 years later, going sideways and spewing a mixture of tire and diesel smoke, has caught my eye.

The original 12V Diesel straight six wouldn’t do, so Peltola swapped out the engine for a 3.0L Diesel from a 1998 E-Class. He’s added a GT40 Turbo off a semi truck, a 6-speed transmission, the rear axles from a Lexus GS, and the rear suspension from a Mazda RX8. He says that, though it’s never been on a dyno, the engine probably makes about 450 hp and 550 lb/ft of torque. As you can see in the video below, that’s more than enough to put on a damn good show. I just wish he had left the rear-facing third row so I could re-live my youth from the best seat in the house.

[Source: Jalopnik]

By now, we all know that Tanner Foust has some skills behind the wheel. From drifting public roads to winning two gold medals at X-Games Rally and Super Rally, Tanner is the kind of driver we like to get behind, and a damn good friend to The Smoking Tire. Tanner has been competing in the European Rallycross series this year, and for the first time, rallycross has come to America, at New Jersey Motorsports Park. Competing against some of his biggest X-Games rivals, including Dave Mirra, Travis Pastrana, and Andrew Comrie-Picard (ACP), Tanner positively wiped the floor track with them all, and got himself a well-deserved first place. Video after the jump.

With the X-Games coming up this weekend, drivers are practicing all over Southern California in preparation. Unlike a skateboard, cars need to be thoroughly run-in before competition, and sometimes things break at the last minute. So, thorough practice sessions are necessary, and I just happen to be one of the lucky few  that BF Goodrich invited to Irwindale Speedway (I mean a rock quarry down the street from Irwindale Speedway) to check out Samuel Hubinette and Andrew Comrie-Picard giving their matching Mitsubishi Evo’s a real thrashing. Formula Drift Champion Hubinette, in the newer Evo X, was extremely excited about this weekend’s competition, saying, “Driving a rally car, even though it’s new for me, feels very natural. Coming from drifting, ice racing in Sweden, and stunt driving, Rally is a natural extension of my abilities, and it’s just really, really fun. The jump they are building will be the biggest I’ve ever done by far, but as long as you keep your speed right, it’s one of the easier parts of the course.”

Comrie-Picard, known simply as ACP by, well, pretty much everyone, was looking great, hustling his Evo IX around the short course and scaring the crap out of any journalist willing to hop in the passenger seat.

Mega-Rally-Gallery after the jump!

We’ve seen some crazy Arab driving before. Whether it’s Carrera GT’s and BMW M5′s drifting through downtown Dubai, or Shiekhs running Formula One cars on closed sections of desert highway, Arabs clearly know how to have fun in a car. (I should know, I’m half Arab – MF).

Here’s another good one. A bunch of guys in Lexus LX570 trucks block off traffic while some guys in shitbox Daihatsu’s and Toyota pickup trucks start doing donuts and drifting. Then the Daihatsu goes up on two wheels, and proceeds to cruise down Shiekh Zayed Road, the main road through Dubai, for several minutes, weaving through traffic.

I wish we were brave enough to try something like this on the 405 Freeway in LA, but we’re quite certain it wouldn’t end well.

Thanks, Vinny for the tip!

The Smoking Tire goes behind the scenes with Tanner Foust on Mulholland Highway to see what it takes to put together his “Street Drift” Series.

What you may not know is this: if you have seen Tanner’s “Street Drift: Mulholland” video, you may realize that it was shot with dozens of cameras from all angles, including a chase car and camera-mounted R/C Helicopter.  Our video, of the same day, was shot with One HD Cam and Two Flip Cam’s. That’s it. You be the judge, who used their resources better?

I know Tanner pretty well, have for a couple years, and the dude’s got skills. It’s not hard to really scare the crap out of a passenger when you’re a professional driver, but going sideways at very high speeds and NOT scaring the passenger? Much more difficult. I was at Mulholland Hwy the day they shot this, and The Smoking Tire has exclusive, behind-the-scenes footage of this video that we will be airing in a few weeks. For all of you who are going to make the Ken Block comparison comments, realize that KB’s Gymkhana videos had TONS of tire tread marks around the obstacles, the result of him doing take after take. Look at the asphalt on Mulholland; pristene, which means one take.

Lamborghini has invaded the snow-covered territory of Subaru, Audi and Mistubishi. This Gallardo, built by reiter-engineering, has some serious snow tires and one of the most hauntingly amazing exhaust sounds I’ve ever heard. I watched Tiff Needell drift an LP-560-4, tamely, around an ice course, but this is different. Drifting is just how this car stretches before it tears up a ski slow, surely causing an avalanche with the howl it produces. Simply awesome. And soon, this will be cheaper than buying a normal lift ticket. We want to thank our friend ToofaneBatamameezi for hosting this awesome video.

Your friends and family won’t understand. People will look at you strangely. They’ll want to shun you, then hold an intervention. Anything for you to break the habit. Who the hell wants an 20-year old Honda Civic 4WD Wagon, especially when it looks like that? They’ll never get it, you tell yourself. They’re all a bunch of ignoramuses. What do they know?

But it’s ok. Your friends here at The Smoking Tire? We understand. And we feel the same way.

Watch with caution; this video may just change your life. You’ve been warned.

And there’s still one on eBay Motors right now. Act fast, however: this video’s already up to 44,000 views.

- Blake Rong

While filming at Adams Motorsports Park in Riverside, CA for an upcoming episode, we stuck around to see what Thursday Night Drift was about. Turns out, it’s a great place to see some real amateur talent. First a beautiful RX7 show up, driven by Formula D driver Kyle Mohan, and then, a race trailer showed up with Sam Hubinette’s matte-black 750hp Viper, and Sam put on a real show for us…. Enjoy this bonus footage from Adams Motorsports Park!