Benny Kirk
1,675 ARTICLES
2024 Nissan Leaf Buyers Rejoice, Your Ride's Eligible For a $3,750 Tax Credit
16 Oct 2023, 15:10 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Remember when the Nissan Leaf was once the pound-for-pound greatest deal you could buy in the entire EV space? In the days before Tesla cannibalized its market share and relegated it to a life outside the upper echelon of high-selling EVs, the Leaf...
EV Charging Could Bring Power Grids to Their Knees, Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
16 Oct 2023, 02:12 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / From the energy generation perspective, mankind currently stands on the precipice of history. Mankind's come to a point where it needs to make concrete decisions on how to supply roughly eight billion people with enough electricity to stretch ...
Blackbird on Steroids: How the Convair Kingfish Was Almost a Better, Faster SR-71
14 Oct 2023, 22:01 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / In the perennial game of aeronautical anatomy-waving contests, the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird wins every time. All the world's achievements in aviation in the last 120 years don't hit home in most folk's minds the way the Blackbird...
B-50 Superfortress: The Cold War U.S. Air Force's Idea of a Hot Rod Bomber
13 Oct 2023, 00:13 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Every once in a while, the U.S. Air Force lets out their inner petrolhead. During the tail end of World War II and the Cold War especially, taking an existing airframe and fitting more powerful engines was more viable than designing a new aircraft ...
Straight Outta NASA: 1-of-1 Ford Galaxie Ferried Personnel Around Langley Research Center
10 Oct 2023, 19:05 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / It's not often that the automotive and space travel industries intersect in a way that people from both sides of the aisle can appreciate. The old NASA Astrovans immediately pop into mind, but is there anything else out there? Well, as it turn...
Toyota Asserts Its Dominance Over the Hybrid Market, Reveals 2024 Prius
10 Oct 2023, 17:20 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / It will take a long time for us to square in our mind that the XW60-series, fifth-generation Toyota Prius, is a "cool car" by any stretch of the definition. Even almost a full year after the new Prius started its production run, it still ...
Mercedes-Benz Tells Tesla To Bring it On, Reveals eActros 600 EV Semi Truck
10 Oct 2023, 15:56 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / For years, one company stood above and beyond the others in the drive to fully electrify the world's fleet of long-haul trucks. Of course, this company is Tesla with their quite unoriginally-named Tesla Semi. It's to the point where many ...
Mercedes-Maybach Teams With Carbon Neutral Spaceflight Company to Peer Into the Future
9 Oct 2023, 17:20 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Does anyone else feel like these collaborations between various automakers and companies in other industries get stranger and stranger as each year passes? It might be another one of those petty musings you hear from auto journalists as they'r...
Honda Introduces Prototype Semi-Autonomous Riding Mower at Equip Exposition 2023
9 Oct 2023, 16:31 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / When you focus primarily on their automotive operations, it's easy to forget just how many places Honda's engineers have their sights set on at any given moment. From quality motorcycles to fast, efficient business jets, there's seld...
302-Swapped Ford Capri Mk III Is Euro Elegance With American Muscle Under the Hood
9 Oct 2023, 15:07 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / To a certain set of people on a certain continent, the best low-slung, two-seater, rear-wheel-drive sports car from Ford back in the day wasn't the Mustang, but instead the Ford Capri. All the more interesting because the man who designed it, ...
Think a Stock C8 Corvette Stingray Is Too Quiet? Milltek Sport's New Exhaust Has Your Back
9 Oct 2023, 13:48 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Remember when people couldn't stop raving about the C8 Corvette Stingray? When people shouted from the rooftops that the first mid-engine Corvette was a sign that the American auto industry could finally be taken seriously in the sports car sp...
Half-Complete Curtiss P-40 Kittyhawk is the World's Most Cursed Game of Lego
8 Oct 2023, 18:52 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Some time ago, we took a trip to the Glenn H. Curtiss Museum in Central New York, where museum staff had managed to piece together the remains of two Curtiss P-40 Warhawks that'd collided mid-air decades ago into something resembling an intact...
This 1970 Charger R/T 440 Sports an Ultra Rare Surprise, Just Not Under the Hood
8 Oct 2023, 17:44 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Will people ever stop talking about late 60s and early 70s Dodge Chargers like they were a divine gift from an all-powerful muscle car deity that only Americans worship? Well, people haven't stopped since the day they left the factory floor, s...
Can't Stand Fancy Modern HD Trucks? This 1983 GMC 3500 Big Block Soothes What Ails You
8 Oct 2023, 16:21 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / If you've checked the pricing for heavy-duty dually trucks lately, you'll know the experience is similar to the sensation of having your elbows smashed in with a ball-peen hammer and being asked to write a check for at least $60,000 for t...
This S50-Swapped BMW E30 is the Pride of South Africa, Gets Low With Air Suspension
8 Oct 2023, 14:30 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / South Africa is a country that's in a spot of bother at the moment. But even in the face of generation-shaping problems on their home soil, the spirit of endurance, perseverance, and genuine innovation is still rife within its people. Want pro...
S2000-Swapped 1977 Toyota Celica is JDM Blasphemy at its Finest
7 Oct 2023, 17:51 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / There are few things on the Lord's Earth that are better than a well-sorted, old-school JDM rear-wheel drive sports car. There's just something about that classic rear-drive sports coupe layout we've come to associate with muscle car...
This Godzilla-Swapped Mercury Zephyr Wagon Runs Low 8 Quarters With Groceries in the Back
7 Oct 2023, 14:59 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / In its stock form, the 1980 Mercury Zephyr is the official car of going to church every day and twice on Sunday, going slow as molasses in the dead of winter the entire time. It's not the kind of car that inspires most people to drive it quick...
This Man Has World's Largest Ford Crown Victoria Collection, Fills Multiple Warehouses
6 Oct 2023, 17:45 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / The Ford Crown Victoria is the kind of car that was built to be driven into the ground before being repaired cheaply and easily to get right back to it again. You might delude yourself into thinking there simply aren't any nice Crown Victorias...
Forget a New ID. Buzz, We Wanna Drive This Coyote-Swapped VW Type 2
6 Oct 2023, 14:40 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / For all the mythos surrounding the old Volkswagen Type 2 Bus, all the flower children and the hippies smoking out their cabins in a haze of "legal tobacco," they weren't exactly the nicest things in the world to drive. Heck, even dri...
RB-1 Conestoga: A Cargo Plane Built for the Aluminum Apocalypse That Never Happened
6 Oct 2023, 13:05 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Elon Musk might want you to believe he's a real genius for deciding to build SpaceX's Starship mostly out of stainless steel. He might hope you marvel at an ingenious use of high-quality build materials that, more often than not, aren...