Are you a "do-it-yourselfer" (DIY) hot rodder?  Do you wrench on your own cars?  Well, this is a DIY'er to the max.  I came across pictures of Jared Drinkwater's Mitsubishi Evolution on NASIOC.com, a Subaru enthusiasts forum of all places.  I'm a huge fan of the Mitsubish Evo for sure, but I was blown away at Jared's engineering and build skills.  Jared is like the ultimate do-it-yourselfer.  He is a Mechanical Engineer by day, by night he engineers parts for his Evo, which he races on road courses.  Jared makes his own aero parts, race seat rails, fire extinguisher mounts, rebuilt his own engine (with a stroker kit and bigger turbo) and more.  Dig these pics of his ride and Binary Eng parts you can buy for your own Evo. Jared's "Binary Engineering" Mitsubishi Evolution in his new race livery.  Of course, he designed and applied these decals on his own.  Dig the front aero package, designed and built by Jared using lots of aluminum sheet and carbon fiber. This was the stock front bumper.  Jared has added a tow hook (just in case he needs help getting out of...

Car shows are fun, but I think I speak for alot of car owners when I say: "Get out of the lawn chairs!" Don't get me wrong, time with friends catching up on new projects and great hot rod buys are essential to car shows, but what else is there to do? That's where Autocross comes in... At the 1st annual Goodguys Spring Nationals in Scottsdale, AZ, Goodguys added an event they call the "Street Challenge Autocross".  Goodguys does a great job of setting up a small, twisty race course that's perfect for taking cars normally at home on the the straight line quarter mile and forcing them to go left and right. Up for grabs is a set of BFG tires for winners in a few different classes including Vendor, Hot Rod and Street Rod. (Somebody help me with the classes... they're not listed on Goodguys website) So who was racing? The winner of the hot rod autocross was my friend Doug Jerger in his 1934 Ford Roadster. Doug is the owner and chief painter at Squeeg's Kustoms in Mesa, AZ. Doug's built a couple America's Most Beautiful...

8 Days. 3,500 Miles. 0 Excuses. 1 Lap. 1 Fast Camaro. This can only be the formula for One Lap of America, a brutal competition and that may be THE ultimate test of a street car's performance and reliability as well as teamwork and driver skill. Optima Batteries, Hellwig Products and ISIS Wiring are supporting the "1 Lap Camaro" team in this 8 day, 3,500 mile battle where teams rally around the country competing at some of USA's top race tracks. Dig this PCKStudio rendering of the 1 lap Camaro over the race track locations.  Man that is cool!  I think you'll be able to get that logo on a tshirt. The 1 Lap Camaro seen here is a highly modded 1967 Camaro RS running an LS7 427ci Z06 engine tweaked by the well known Katech Performance crew who preps the engines for the C5R and C6R endurance Corvettes that race and win at Daytona and LeMans. This is a rad Pro-Touring style Camaro real track focus. Dig the front splitter, low ride height, big and wide wheels with grippy rubber.  This thing means business. Keep your eye's peeled on pro-touring.com forums as well...

It was my first time to a 24 Hours of LeMons race. As soon as I could see the track, I knew I wanted to do this. How else can you race all day for so little money?  With a set of not-so-serious sounding racing rules we told you about in a another post, there were some very serious safety rules in place at the track. Off-track excursions or spins were subject to penalties and that's where the 24 Hours of LeMons style fun started. (click the picture to read) The penalties for a track infraction are wide reaching.  For the worst kinds of repeated offenses, including total disdain for judges, there were simple time penalties, but with a bribe here or there (of course bribes are legal!) you could get off with a written penalties like the ones above.  I won't guess the political affiliation of "Chief Perpetrator" Jay Lamm. So what other kinds of penalties did I see? The top photo shows the tires of one team in the stands so they could, "watch and learn how to race."  Too funny! The car was on jack stands...

I wrote about the 24 Hours of LeMons (yea, I spelled that right) in another blog about the "Strict Racing Rules". I expected some easy going people out to have a great time. I found'm! It took the "Eyesore Racing" shown above 6 months of weekends to put their 94 Mazda Miata together. The car, built for $500 or less by the rules, was made from 2 Miatas practically welded together in the middle. One car had front end damage and no motor and the other had been carefully wrapped around a tree with the front end intact. The engine, including the small rusty-wheeled turbo from a Mexico only Dodge pickup, was resurrected from 4 engines. Where would 24 Hours of LeMons racing be without Craigslist! The team consists of neighbors and friends making up 4 sets of couples out of Long Beach, CA. In the Phoenix race, their 9th race,  6 of the 8 team members drive including "March Hare" Dave, "Tweedle Dee" Jay, "Tweedle Dum" Dan, "Alice" Sara and "White Rabbit" Sarah and my man, the "Mad Hatter" Kyle who helped with the details for this story....

So, its no secret that I dig Japanese cars.  I certainly have a special place in my automotive heart for the Honda Civic.  I've owned 2 and am looking for #3.  Why?  It's a Civic?  They're boring, cheap, small, chick cars with no power and are front wheel drive (FF = front engine, front wheel drive).  Well, lemme "splain"...Being a father of 4 with a mortgage, a retirement plan, food storage, swim lessons, youth baseball, basketball and soccer, 2.5 kids still in diapers...shall I go on?...then you now see the Civic's big advantage.  Cheap, reliable transportation.  For a car guy, the Honda Civic also offers a lightweight chassis (1992-00 Civics weigh 2200-2500lbs), amazing mpg (I've average 39mpg), double wishbone suspension at all 4 corners, ease of transplanting other more powerful Honda/Acura engines and likely THE biggest aftermarket, making the Civic is a great choice. For this post, I bring you one such Civic, a budget Time Attack machine owned by Tag Evanson of Arizona.  These pictures are from 2008 at GT Live at the Miller Motorsports Park.  Tag Evanson is from Arizona and made the trip up to Utah for...

My first car was a 1972 Bug I picked up from a family friend for $500 (Check my Bug Garage here).  Then I spent 2 years in Brazil as a missionary for my church.  Brazil was one of the few countries that manufactured the Volkswagen Beetle.  I was surrounded by them.  One of the cities I lived in had a race track and they used to run Copa Fusca, which means Beetle Cup, a race class just for road racing Vdub Bugs.  Some of these photos also come from the German version, the Kafer Cup series.  I got to thinking and did a quick google image search.  Check these Fuscas out, so rad! I dig the front airdam spoiler, extra wide fenders and wide wheels and tires.  Pretty simple formula. This silver Fusca may be running a front radiator or oil cooler, not sure.  Man that looks fun! Here's a German Kafer racer.  Check out that big Porsche style rear wing!  The little vent behind the rear window tells you its a 1972 or newer Bug.  I believe all these VW racers are "Super Beetles", the name given to the...

Call them "lemons" or piles of crap or simply junk. Still, can you argue these guys are having fun racing them!? I first heard about the Concours d'LeMons and took note because it was part of the super prestigious and maybe super "snobby" Monterey Concours Week including the world famous Concours d'Elegance. Dating back to 1950, we can't hate on the big-daddy of Concours Week in Pebble Beach because they now include class "U" Hot Rods: Lakesters and Bonneville Racers. Gotta hit that show one of these days! The 24 Hours of LeMons, an obvious play on the 24 Hours of LeMans, the worlds oldest endurance sports car race, the "Lemons" used in this race are cars worth not more than $500.  More than anything I'm wondering, what kind of cars get entered and when can I see this first hand?  Turns out, I'll show you the cars here and see'm first hand in Phoenix at the kickoff event for the LeMons series at Firebird Raceway. Dubbed the Auction-Weekend Gavel-Tap GP in honor of the slew of high dollar auction that are part of Arizona's Auction Week, the race...

Yes, I did say Epic.  Trust me, just listen to this video from BMI Racing! We wanted to show you BMI Racing, a Racing Team/Company who moved to the USA from Australia to pursue their racing dreams.  Their plan is to build 2 Mazda RX-8 sport coupes each with a naturally aspirated 4 rotor engine (stock they come with 2 rotor engines and make 240hp), 1 car to compete in drifting and a 2nd car to race in Time Attack events.  They have finished the first one and began testing this past summer. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4Fgi1OQqao[/youtube] Isn't it nuts that a crowd will cheer like that over an engine?  It's the first RX-8 Renesis 4 rotor engine in the world right now.   It sounds like an F1 engine, it just SCREAMS!!!  What's a 4 rotor Wankel?  Well, simply put, each RX8 engine has 2 rotors mounted in series.  This 4 rotor is sort of a "big block" rotary with 4 rotors mounted in series, or 2 RX8 engines mounted in series.  Cool right!?  We don't have many details about the 4 rotor engine setup just yet.  We hope to fill you in with the juicy rotary...

One of the first things I saw Saturday morning as I arrived at Spring Mountain Motorsports Ranch was this Factory Five built, black 1933 Ford Coupe. I was worried it would be all about Camaro's and other muscle cars during the Optima Invitational Ultimate Street Car Challenge - but seeing this smooth coupe roll across the pit assured me I'd have someone to cheer for this race day. I can't tell ya all about the long list of goodies it had - but let me assure you it was long. And being built by Factory Five means its some serious business. After the few laps around the Road Course that all of the cars took, Lucky #13 was just the second car for its chance to prove its stuff in this segment of the race. To the dismay of everyone watching, as it began its second lap of the track, pulling past the first curve we saw a big cloud of dust. What we're all asking now is what came first, the break or the accident? I guess Lucky #13 was not so lucky, it's front suspension snapped right...

Automotive book publisher Motorbooks recently launched  a new book about Paul Newman. "Winning: The Racing Life of Paul Newan" was written by Matt Stone and Preston Lerner with a foreword by none other than Mario Andretti himself, a personal friend and driver for Paul Newman. Most people know Paul Newman for his movies. As a slick pool player in "The Hustler" and then in "The Color of Money" and he could do comedy too in "Slap Stick". These movies and a long list of others made Paul Newman a Hollywood legend! But the book, good for me, doesn't cover the movie side of Paul.  "Winning" focuses on how Paul Newman got into racing, the team's he owned,  the cars he modified for the street and the many race cars he drove and his impact on the people surrounding him. Paul Newman didn't start racing until he was 47 years old.  Many speculate that if he had started when he was 17, (or younger like the racers growing up now behind the wheel of shifter carts) he may have been one of the greats.  He wasn't fast right out of the gate, but he was...