Expensive Vehicles

This is it, the last day of Happy Holley Days and that means today is the last day to save up to 20% on the stuff you want. Use up your Christmas gift cards, stocking money, or whatever you’ve stashed in your piggy bank to get some really cool stuff at prices you won’t see otherwise. We’re talking digital dashes, EFI, intakes, wheels, ignitions, tuners and exhaust, plus a whole lot more. Use the links below! Tonight, our up to 20% off deals close for good! There’s no better time for you to get that upgrade you’ve been wanting. Lock in your savings by ordering today! DON’T MISS OUT > | YOUR WINDOW IS CLOSING SHOP NOW > SHOP NOW > SHOP NOW > SHOP NOW > SHOP NOW > SHOP NOW > | DON’T FORGET THESE

Well, this is peak 1980s right here. You are going to see an awesome and totally bananas UHRA broadcast from the Pontiac Silverdome made in 1988. What’s crazy about this is not any one specific thing, it’s all of it! Monster trucks, Jim Kramer trying to set a jump record, some guy jumping a Lincoln, side by side mud bog drag racing, and even a freaking demolition derby…all inside! Yeah, the mud bog pit it tiny, and the demo derby may as well have been happening in a linen closet, and yes, the monster truck course is not exactly inspired, but hey….this is a show! Along with the competition, there’s also this element of the new “tank trucks” arriving. There’s the Bearfoot tank truck that looks pretty neat and a second rig there to throw down as well. We’re glad that era in monster trucks was short and sweet because it the whole thing went to tracks it would have died out pretty quick. The mud bog runs are 2-second affairs, literally. The editing on the demo derby is fun because after a

This is a great video if you love learning about engines. Gong back to the time of WWII, it takes us through the basic design and operation of a few different types of diesel engines that were used on submarines at the time. There’s the “traditional” four stroke, the two stroke, the double acting piston engine, the opposed piston engine, and more. This is all done in a clear, concise, and really interesting way. The animations are great and they make sense of some stuff that we had been confused about, especially when it comes to the opposed and double acting stuff. There’ so many interesting ways people have tried to make the piston engine better, stronger, and more efficient over the years. While many of them have failed by and large, engineers have learned something from every blind hole they ever jumped down. No, we are not driving cars around with opposed or double acting piston engines, but the design was the right layout for stuff of this size and scale back in the day. Imagin

Sometimes no words are necessary, right? Take this short video for example. It shows one of the most thoroughly destroyed engines this side of the top fuel eliminator pits. Someone with a really keen eye for engine block identification may be able to clue us in as to what model of inliner we are looking at here, but my goodness is it dead. If we are doing some eyeball diagnoses, it appears that things went really south in the third cylinder from the front. The crank journal is all mangled and the fact that the freshly removable “inspection plate” that used to be the block seems to have been jarred loose from that area also leads us to think that number three was the culprit in some shape or fashion. When you look at the size and beef of that connecting rod laying on top of this mess, the camshaft that is busted smooth in two, other valvetrain parts, and the hunk of block that also has a large portion of the oil pan rail with it, you truly get the sense of just how nasty this all must

It took a massive track in Texas and the legendary right foot of AJ Foyt but the Oldsmobile Aerotech set the world’s closed course speed record at an insane 257.123mph back in August of 1987. On that same weekend, Foyt ran a flying mile with a speed of a completely bonkers 267 mph and it seems that 300mph would soon be on the radar of the engineering team behind the car. While they never achieved those types of speeds and frankly we’re not sure the ever tried to, the car had a fantastic legacy that continued for years. In fact, using a 4.0L Olds Aurora power plant, the Aerotech would set an insane list of world endurance records during 1992. Those records were set by teams of drivers and crew working 24-hours a day for eight days straight! Ed Welburn was the designer of the Aerotech and he was a rising star within the ranks of GM at this time. Welburn would later come up with the Art and Science look for Cadillac and would serve as the Vice President of Global Design for General Moto

This is a really cool video, especially for you fans of heavy hauling and big trucks. We’re going to watch a massive steam locomotive and its tender gate hauled from the rails straight into a museum through the streets of London in 1961. The trucks are Scammel Junior Constructor models, the company is Pickford’s and this whole thing rules as hard as you think it does. In specifics this video tells the story of moving Great Western steam locomotive 4073 “Caerphilly Castle” from Park Royal, Swindon to Kensington Science Museum. The Swindon rail yards were the scene of some awesome stuff over the years. Arguably the finest steam engines in the world were built and serviced there for many decades. Thousands and thousands of British laborers and craftsmen called Swindon home for their work through the steam age. Scammel trucks are some of our personal favorites out here. They made lots of neat stuff but the heavy duty Constructors and Junior Constructors stand out. The rigs used here are

We know that loads of you have free-time on your hands these days and that time can be filled doing lots of different stuff. Those of you with off-road vehicles have likely or will soon likely find yourself off in the woods having some fun with your buddies. That fun might result in you getting stuck (all the good fun does, right?) and when that happens PLEASE BE SMARTER THAN THE GUYS IN THIS VIDEO. That’s a double demand when it comes to being smarter by the guy who catches a bumper in the body during this operation of getting truck unstuck. Winch cables, snatch straps, (God forbid) chains, or whatever method you are using to un-stuck a rig all have more energy stored in them than you can imagine and when they fail, disaster is at your doorstep. The guy that gets hurt is legit doing everything wrong. He is not paying attention, he is way too close, he has no clue what’s happening around him and then WHAMO the guy catches a freaking bumper with his body. You see the dude in kind of a

When drag racing became a thing in the first half of the 1960s in England, it took off pretty quickly. Always modest by the standards of American drag racing, English enthusiasts didn’t just import all their stuff from the USA, they built unique machines based on the parts and pieces that had at hand in their own country. This professionally made film from Santa Pod in 1970 rules because we meet interesting people, see cool cars, and get the general impression of what the public thought of the drag racing sport back in its early days. The guy who the film spends the most time with is Michael Collins, a British drag racing enthusiast and automotive journalist who wrote for all the big books over there and was a contributor to American drag racing magazines and places like Hot Rod as well. He describes the sport, the people, the sensations of being in a really fast car, etc. It’s cool. He does it all in fine early 1970s counter culture style by wearing a vest with nothing but his tattoo

Automakers have been creating promotional sales videos since the advent of the moving picture, right? To us, they are great because even in the darkest of times, they were all talking about how fantasticly grand their products were. Now the 1970s was not a bad time for trucks. It may have sucked for cars, but trucks did not suffer as bad as the cars did for a multitude of reasons. They were chasing a different customer base, they were not “performance” vehicles, and the government standards did not set them back as far as the cars did. This film, likely made in 1973 to promote the awesomeness of the 1974 Chevrolet truck line over the compared Ford trucks is great. It is filled with the kinds of wacky tests that make little sense to anyone outside of the marketing department. Strap a big snifter looking thing to the hood of the truck, put ping pong balls in it and drive around? Yes! Lift both of the trucks into a wheelie with a crane and look at the front suspension? Not just yes, He

This is completely and utterly mental. A few years ago we showed you the 1962 film of the Corviars crossing the so called “Darien Gap” which was a 99 mile jungle trail that served as a break in the Pan-American highway. This time we’re taking you to 1960 and showing you the wild story of a group of Corvairs that drove from Chicago to Panama. The drive is pretty normal from Chicago until they get to Mexico and then things begin to get rustic. Then they go from rustic to downright tribal and then from tribal to…well you can see the lead photo. That is mud and muck that the car is plowing! This was during the time when Chevrolet was doing whatever it could to keep the Corvair’s image on the positive after the claims of its dangerous nature began to surface. It would be 1965 when Ralph Nader published his book but the rumblings about the car would start years before. This video shows off the traction, toughness, and downright pluggy nature of these flat six, air-cooled, European inspired

Now this is the type of thing that is completely mesmerizing to us. To see the full process of constructing a massive, 20-clylinder ship engine is just fantastic. Not just because of the size of all the stuff involved but because of the fact that it’s so real and precise. We are talking about a 20-cylinder engine that can turn 1,150 rpm and makes 13,410hp. The torque? It is multiple times that. A couple of these big guys will typically power big ocean going ferries and other mid-sized ships in the working world. We see this engine start as all engines do, as liquid. The block casting process and machining process is shown. We love the visual of the dude next to the block as it is hanging on a giant crane. Just look at the lead photo to see how large it is in comparison to the fork truck! The turbochargers, the way they are sealed, the fact that they are called a “turbocharger group” and when bolted onto the engine, the thing grows in weight to come 40-tons…but the boys are not done ye

We are all kind of in love with the De Tomaso Pantera around here. Listen, they were cool cars! Sure they suffered the same fate as the rest of the stuff in the 1970s with big dumb bumpers and decreasing performance but hot damn were they good looking. This video was mad somewhere in the mid-1970s (judging by said big dumb bumpers) and it features racing legend Bob Bondurant talking about the features and advantages of the Pantera over other exotic and world renown sports cars. The video was made by Lincoln-Mercury who sold the cars through their dealer network. What’s super great about this is the fact that we see the four cars that the Pantera is being benchmarked against at the start of the video. They are the Porsche 911, the Corvette, the Jaguar E-type, and the Ferrari Dino. All of them fall into about the same price point and frankly we think the Pantera is the best looking one of the bunch by a mile. Yeah, the ever weakening 351 engine is a bit of a demerit but the fact of the

OPGI consistently kills it when they come up with various sales and promotions. Why? They understand their customers and know that delivering them the right parts for the right price is what keeps them coming back. Case in point, the company is now in the midst of their NEWYEAR22 sale and that means you can save up to 40% on components ranging from sheetmetal panels, high performance upgrades for your car, or restoration parts to being your beauty back up to pageant standards. When we say that there are some 350 parts that are eligible for discount, we mean it. Weather stripping? Yes. Seat frames? You bet. Window cranks, mats, car covers, engine parts, interior pieces, and the list goes on and on and on. Don’t waste time and more importantly do not waste money by delaying! Hit the image below to see all of the parts for sale that you can save on! Hit the image below to check out all the products you can save on NOW!   The post OPGI NEWYEAR22 Means Savings Of Up To 40% on Sheet Met

This cool little Morris Mini Pickup is getting some cool updates and mods for a guy who really wants to drive it daily. In order to do that reliably, the plan from Steveston Motor Co has been to do a D16 Honda engine swap along with a 5-speed transmission. This is a pretty cool swap because it actually weighs less than the factory subframe, engine, and transmission, and keeps all the factory Mini suspension. It’s not an uncommon swap in the Mini world, but the reason is normally for bigger power for track day events, etc. In this case, the additional power is required so that driving it on today’s freeways isn’t scary. And since the D16 is such a proven and reliable engine combo, that also gets great gas mileage, this little Mini pickup will be like driving a Civic but wrapped in all those great Mini looks. Sounds like a winning combo to me. In stock trim this Morris Mini would have made around 60 horsepower. The VTEC D16 that is going into this little pickup made 126 horsepower stock

Tim Cameron is a badass when it comes to two things. One, building badass rock bouncing rigs, and two, driving them flat out up some of the most insane hills in the country. If you haven’t seen rock bouncing before then buckle up because the highlight video below is going to excite you. These racers throw themselves and their rides up hills and over rocks at speeds like you can’t believe. It’s some of the most violent high speed action you’ll see, and yet sometimes these rides fly through the air as smooth as a ballerina, so you just never know. In 2021 Tim Cameron was the man to beat, which won’t surprise anyone who’s seen him drive before. The rigs that come out of his shop are as capable as anything that has ever hit the mountain and they have huge power and sound like a million bucks when flying up the mountainside. Cameron has built tube chassis rigs with big inch big block power, a Whipple Charged LS454, and more. They are usually power glide equipped and feature big solid axles

There is nothing like a huge wheelstand or crazy save to get the crowd going at a race. A crash always has everyone on their feet as well, but we hate seeing those compared to the wheelstands and saves. Thanks to the folks at Spoold Media we’ve got their best saves, wheelstands, crashes, and more from 2021 to watch all in one place. Since they cover such a variety of races, there are some really cool cars hauling ass, flying through the air, and carrying the wheels for days. I love this stuff and I know you will too. As we get through the end of 2021 and ready ourselves for the 2022 racing season we’ll be watching this kind of action again real soon on a track near you. Until then, enjoy the 2021 highlights and let us know what you think. Video Description: With great power on small and big tires, comes great risks!!!!! Drag racing can produce some of the craziest moments whether its huge wheelstands, insane saves, rough crashes, or even cars flying through the air, this sport is dan

No, they don’t build them like they used to and this video sure is proof. You are going to watch a group of guys get a really big old stationary engine fired up on a Pakistani farm to run an irrigation pump and water their crop. This is a cool video on multiple levels. Firstly, we have this crazy of YouTube “will it run” videos being made these days and while those are cool, they’re effectively cheap and easy entertainment, right? This “will it run” video is about feeding people. There’s no option of this ancient engine not running. No engine, no pump, no pump, no water, no water, nothing to eat. We believe this to be a Ruston Hornsby engine. That company was based in England but they did have manufacturing operations in Pakistan back in the day. This engine has obviously been here a very long time and it was placed here not be accident but on a proper concrete base and likely by trained millwrights. We’re guessing it dates somewhere from the 1920s and everything about it is dangerou

Call it an Iron Lion, a Holden 308, or a little sleeper small block, but just don’t call it boring. We truly dig this little engine build and its performance on the dyno for the fact that it illustrates the fact that there’s still a lot of fun and satisfaction in taking the simple road and that four digit horsepower isn’t necessary to have a cool engine. The engine in question here is a Holden 308 with factory heads that have been freshened and touched up, a new camshaft, stock intake, and a Quadra-Jet on top. The fact that by the time the testing and tweaking are done the little sucker is making more than 340hp at 6,000 RPM and 363 lb-ft of torque at 3,900 is fun to us. Why build the engine like this? When you see the car it is going into you’ll understand. The machine has been concours restored and the owner wanted the carpet to match the drapes so to speak. It would have not suited his purpose to have some aluminum headed, single plane intake equipped or fuel injected version of t

You know that we love the freaky weirdo parts that were developed for the flathead Ford V8 over the years. From the overhead valve conversions, intake manifolds by the hundreds, and the list goes on. That said, we have never seen or even heard of the awesomness below. You are looking at one of the only pairs left on Earth of a short run and apparently failed experiment by Federal Mogul in the mid/late 1930s. These are Thermo Flow cylinder heads that are made from Bronze Copper alloy. According to the ad and what we have read, about 12 pair were ever made. Garlits has one, a least one has been on a foundational hot rod, and the rest of them? Your guess is as good as ours. As you can see these heads come with a log type manifold that moved the coolant. This also meant that no coolant actually passed into the head  at all. Apparently engineers believed that the head dissipation properties of the alloy would be enough to handle the less than crushing cylinder temps and pressures of a stoc

The NTT IndyCar Series is on a massive rebound since Roger Penske got hold of it. The racing has been really good, the crowds are starting to return (The Indy500 was never an issue there), the driver talent level and age are all moving in the right direction, and for a series that was seemingly on the verge of non-existence a few years back, it’s not living but also thriving. This video looks back over 10 of the biggest shunts, crashes, or wrecks as your preferred vernacular would call them over the course of the 2021 season. From spins at the Speedway to stuck throttles in Detroit, you will see some pretty nasty hits here. It has always amazed us, especially at places like Indy, how the cars seem to give such little warning before washing out from under a driver. We’re guessing that the guy at the tiller has a far more clear picture of his own struggles than we do watching from the outside, but it is pretty terrifying to see one of the cars halfway through a corner and then piled in

Repco Supercars, formerly Australian Touring Cars, is a really fun racing series to watch and the Bathurst 1000 is one of their most iconic races. This track is one of the more exciting and challenging road course in the world and features incredibly technical and high-speed sections that test drivers and machines. I love watching racing from Bathurst, and no matter what is running there it is going to be exciting. I’ve always been a fan of Australian Touring Cars, although the two-doors like the new Mustangs do kind of throw me for a loop. If you haven’t watched this kind of racing, or it’s been a while, then this highlight video is going to excite you for sure. Check it out below. Video Description: The Repco Supercars Championship (formally Australian Touring Car Championship) is the premier motorsport category in Australasia and one of Australia’s biggest sports. Globally, it is recognised as the best touring car category in the world and a leader in motorsport entertainment.

Now this is pretty awesome. You are about to take a trip back in time to the 1970s and more importantly that trip will take us to a couple of the country’s drag strips like Thunder Park to see nitro funny cars, top fuel dragsters and whole bunch of different sportsman cars. The piece was made for a news magazine show and it is very in-depth for the time. They visit racers Mike Gearing and Brett Wilson no only in their shops but at the track. There’s Bruce Springsteen tunes used in here and it really provides a cool look at the scene in New Zealand back then. As you will hear the reporter mention, there were about 10 fuel cars in the country back when this was made in the 1970s. We know that the country has a pretty awesome drag racing scene these days but we are not sure that there are any top fuel cars or nitro funny cars left at this point. We dig the fact that the numbers were so small that funny cars and dragsters matched up for competition and threw down for the crowd. A neat w

This semi-blurry, obviously converted from tape video from Lebanon Valley Dragway sometime in the 1990s or early 2000s hit me like a ton of bricks because it features what is probably my all time favorite drag car. This is a 1976 Honda that’s powered by a supercharged 331ci Chrysler Hemi. It was run by some guys from (I think) Connecticut and it was called the Hull Brothers Bomb Squad. Sponsored by Cardinal Honda in Groton, Connecticut this singular car was the most ridiculous thing I had ever seen when I first laid eyes on it and for as long as I am in drag racing, I’ll never forget this little car. I never, ever thought I would see it again and it has probably been the better part of 20 years since I have seen it in the first place. Every now and again I would look for video of photos of the thing and I always came up dry, especially on the video end. I was looking in the wrong place or searching with the wrong terms, or something. When I saw this car sitting in the pits the first

When it comes to motorsports most people claim that they just want to see “good racing” and that can vary. In drag racing, that means some upsets, some close runs, some national records. In stock car racing, it usually means that the machines at the front of the pack are so evenly matched that they can nearly swap the lead at will between each other. It just doesn’t happen that often for a myriad of reasons but when it does, especially in stock cars, it is an enthralling thing to watch. Take this amazing battle between Darrell Waltrip and Richard Petty over the closing laps of the 1979 NASCAR Rebel 500 at Darlington Super Speedway in South Carolina. This track has such incredible history which it keeps delivering on year after year that moments like this can get lost in the ever shifting sands of time. In what has to be the most entertaining set of laps we have ever watched, Waltrip and Petty trade the lead back and forth with impunity and as you will see, it is one heroic racing mov

(By Tom Lohnes) –  A few days ago, Toyota and Lexus released a whopping 15 different EV prototypes that are all going to make production in one way or another. Toyota had a few cool ones, like the sports car that could possibly be the new MR2, the electric pickup truck, and the tiny little compact cruiser. But Lexus definitely stole the show here. Here’s a few highlights. Lexus electric hypercar: With the LFA and it’s screaming V10 being nearly a decade in the rearview mirror now, Lexus needs a new halo car. Sure, there’s the LC, but to most people, that’s just a run-of-the-mill GT car. So, Lexus has decided to make another top dog, and this time it utilizes electric power. With sleek, aerodynamic styling, subtle Lexus badging, and a side profile that screams fast, this new hypercar could possibly be called LFA. This is a farther-off model though, with the announcement likely happening in 2023. Lexus wagons: The station wagon market is officially dead in the mainstream U.S market

It was in 1957 when the the gloves really started to come off with regard to “factory” racing programs from Ford and Chevrolet. Chevrolet launched the “not a factory race car but kind of is a factory race car” Black Widow with its rock and roll fuel injected engine and not wanting to be caught with their pants down, Ford decided on their own countermeasure. The guy running the show at the time was Robert McNamara and he was never someone who viewed racing and performance with much more than distain but he did know that if Chevrolet showed up at NASCAR races and speed trials with the Black Widows and buried the Fords deep on the results sheets, the company would look bad. That’s why he commissioned the construction of a limited number of McCulloch blown Thunderbirds to attack the beaches at Daytona during Speed Week. The engines, using a pre-determined before a single one was ever built 300hp rating made great power and a Thunderbird set a new sports car record of 138mph on the beach,