In our continuing coverage of the lead up to this weekend’s Summer X Games rally smorgasbord (live on ESPN from 4pm – 8pm) here’s Top Gear USA presenter and occasional drifter, Tanner Foust playing with his favorite four wheeled toy. We’ll be on the ground at the Coliseum from tomorrow on with Twitter updates and more.
Yesterday the Ford Rally Team camped out at Brian Deegan’s Metal Mulisha compound in the wine country of Temecula to put their Ford Fiestas through a shakedown. Here’s a clip from our good friends at RallyFix.com
Autofiends will be embedded at the X Games 16 rally events this weekend in downtown LA. As a preview here’s drift racer Sam Hubinette at the BF Goodrich media day saving his NOS AMS Mitsubishi EVO X from a roll over that certainly would have spoilt his weekend.
Antoine L’Estage and Nathalie Richard won this past weekend’s New England Forest Rally in their Rockstar Energy Drink Royal Group Mitsubishi Lancer Evo X. With this victory, the duo clinched the 2010 Rally America Championship. This is first time that a Quebec driver has won the Rally America championship. In addition, L’Estage broke Travis Pastrana and Subaru’s four year championship streak. 2010 is the first year that L’Estage contested the full Rally America season. The Rockstar Energy Drink backed team successfully finished every round of the series on the podium, with three second places, one third, and then two victories in Maine and Pennsylvania last month.
Brammo has just released this video and PR about the upcoming Empulse electric motorcycle. Claiming 100mph plus top speed and a range over 100 miles the Empulse finally looks like an electric bike you’d actually want to be seen on. My only problem is most of my Sunday morning rides clock in at well over 100 miles but this does look like a fun commuter bike. Full PR after the jump.
If you’ve hung around here long enough you know there’s some serious lust for Porsches–especially those with a more esoteric flare. Over at our favorite time suck website, Bring A Trailer, we just discovered this beauty. Its a clone/tribute of the Rothmans Porsche 953 rally cars that ran around Africa in the early eighties. Very nicely put together and going for a fraction of the cost of a real deal version, we most definitely want.
Jeff Zwart is the guy every car guy wants to be when they grow up. He gets paid to film and photo for the world’s top manufacturers including Porsche. He is rumored to have a collection of some very rare and interesting cars-mainly Porsche. He is a founder member of the R-Gruppe–an underground clique of guys who hot rod–you guessed it–Porsches. He is also rumored to have a rally stage in his back yard and he has a Rally America Championship to his name too. Oh and he he took the Two Wheel Drive Time Attack class record at Pikes Peak this year from one of his proteges, Rhys Millen. Here is a video of him running his Porsche GT3 on the legendary mountain. Pure Awesome!
Goodyear have just launched their Assurance ComforTred Touring. Designed as a premium tire for luxury sedans, it helps deliver a smooth, comfortable ride with features labeled as “Comfort Zones.” There’s the Comfort Layer, for a smooth, comfortable ride and the ComfortEdgeTM, which includes an outer comfort layer and an inner handling layer. In addition to the smooth, comfortable ride, the Assurance ComforTred Touring helps provide refined handling, all-season traction and a tread life limited warranty up to 80,000 miles, all in addition to the signature “touring” and “comfort” feel of the product. This new product will help provide the comfort and handling tuned for today’s mid- and upper-scale sedans. On sale now.
