Benny Kirk
1,646 ARTICLES
Toyota TRD Pops Out at 2024's Mint 400 Race With a Lovable Pro Lineup
17 Mar 2024, 22:54 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / You'll hear me say that the re-incarnated Mint 400 is the closest thing to a lawless outlaw race, as you can find in America 2024. In an off-road race with enough classes on two or four wheels to encompass just about any wheeled vehicle, the p...
Emme Hall's '01 Mazda MX-5 is the Gloriously Weirdest Entry at the 2024 Mint 400
16 Mar 2024, 18:00 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / The glorious thing about the Mint 400 is that it's probably the last truly lawless racing event left in North America. At a time when rules and bureaucracy have come to define mainstream racing, the re-incarnated Mint 400 race takes just about...
Mint 400: The Real Story Behind America's Oldest and Greatest Off-Road Race
14 Mar 2024, 08:08 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / We totally understand the plight of the lapsed racing fan. The kind of people who once loved motorsport in whatever form was put in front of their faces but wound up drifting from it for one reason or another. If there was a nickel for every time s...
Looking for a Dirt Cheap Family Beater? Skip Over This '82 Chevy Caprice Diesel Wagon
10 Mar 2024, 20:05 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / For all the six and seven-figure hypercars we fixate around here, we try to look out for the little guy every once in a while. We understand that most working-class folks can't even afford the most basic new vehicles, let alone an electric one...
Crusty Datsun 1600 Fairlady Barnfind Packs an All-American Surprise Under the Hood
10 Mar 2024, 18:32 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / We've covered so many LS and Coyote swaps over the years that sometimes you can find yourself retching at the thought of looking at even one more. With that in mind, we adore odd-couple engine swaps between a rolling chassis and an engine with...
These Mad Lads Squeezed 800 Horses Out of a K24-Swapped Honda CR-V, Major Respect
10 Mar 2024, 09:43 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / The second-generation Honda CR-V was little more than a seventh-generation Honda Civic platform retconned to fit into an all-wheel-drive light SUV form factor that excited the type of folks who want SUV looks and sensibilities with all the reliabil...
RPM Motorsports' '06 Trailblazer SS Runs Eight-Second Quarter Miles, Here's How
10 Mar 2024, 08:22 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / The first-generation Chevy Trailblazer SS was something of a pariah in its time. Sure, it might've looked the part of a rugged, dependable 4x4. But let's be real: looks can be deceiving. In a proverbial sea of SUVs from Toyota, Honda, and...
VEV's All-New Fleet of Busses are an EV Powerhouse, Ready to Enter Service in Scotland
6 Mar 2024, 23:06 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / The fine and often eccentric folks of Glasgow and Edinburgh need quite a large fleet of busses to whisk their citizens from place to place. For as long as there've been inter-city busses in Scotland, diesel power was the be-all-end-all, ...
This Fully-Built '82 Ford Escort XR3 is the Ultimate European Restomod Project
6 Mar 2024, 19:57 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / When most people think of restomods, they think of large, American muscle cars that've had their massive engines ripped out of them and swapped out for one just as large but a heck of a lot more modern and simple to live with. At least, ...
TM Customs' Coyote-Swapped '67 Ford Galaxie Is a Large Engine in an Even Larger Car
6 Mar 2024, 18:44 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / We lament the fact that time after time, gearheads in search of a fitting platform to turn into a restomod without breaking the bank buying a rolling chassis routinely snub the third-generation Ford Galaxie. Larger and more comfortable than a...
Lancia Ypsilon: The Story of the Under-the-Radar Ugliest Car Ever Built
5 Mar 2024, 21:41 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / We're conditioned as car enthusiasts to poke jokes at cars that don't excite the eyes in some way. Not to say that every hatchback has to look like a Ferrari, but people are more likely than not to forgive a vehicle's faults if it�...
This '71 Chevy Vega Was a Nightmare Car for GM, Can an LS1 Swap Change That?
4 Mar 2024, 19:01 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / We need not bore you with another diatribe about how the Chevy Vega was an unmitigated disaster vehicle for General Motors. But long story short, it's hard to market your cheap subcompact as a true car of the people when it's had more rec...
Rags to Riches: How a Crusty ’54 Chevy Truck Got an LSX and a Six-Figure Auction Price
4 Mar 2024, 16:53 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Let us ask you something. What really makes a classic restomod genuinely valuable? Is there a combination of a specific model, model year, and engine swap guaranteed to bring home the big bucks at auction? What about the story behind the vehicle? T...
Here's How Apple TV's 'For All Mankind' Legitimately Changed My Life, No Seriously
4 Mar 2024, 05:10 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / I can't guarantee I can spare you the umpteenth zillenial sob story as I recount my career in aerospace journalism these last two years or so. But as it turns out, terminally online automotive/aerospace journalists have brains, neurons, and ne...
Poor Man's Cobra: This 302 V8-Swapped Sunbeam Alpine is a Classic Anglo-American Tag Team
3 Mar 2024, 05:46 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / In totally original, numbers-matching condition, a genuine 1966 Shelby Cobra 427 is a six-to-seven-figure halo car that no regular gent or gal has any business getting behind the wheel of. Like ultra-rare Porsches and Ferraris of similar vintage, o...
Paul Foster's Rover V8-Swapped E21 3-Series Is a Spitfire Underneath, Messerschmitt On Top
3 Mar 2024, 00:14 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / If there's one thing we find ourselves fawning over around here, it isn't the umpteenth Coyote or LS swap we've seen this week. It's the oddball engine swaps between a rolling chassis and a drive train that we haven't seen ...
Chiron in the Sky: The Tragically Spectacular Story of the Bugatti Model 100
2 Mar 2024, 16:22 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / When most people think of Bugatti, they think of the pop culture icon the brand only recently became in the 21st century. The suave, sophisticated manufacturers of the pound-four-pound fastest production motorcars ever to see the light of day. But ...
Part Plucky Britt, Part JDM Hero, This K24-Swapped Hillman Hunter Slays
28 Feb 2024, 21:12 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Ask a North American what a Hillman Hunter is, and they might tell you it sounds like the name of some Sherlock Holmes-esque English movie hero from a film series you've never even heard of. Ask a Britt or an Aussie the same question, and you ...
Forget the Bronco Raptor, This LS3 Swapped Nissan Patrol Has Even More Power
28 Feb 2024, 16:20 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / A couple of weeks ago, I happened to get stuck in traffic behind a brand-new Ford Bronco Raptor, onto which the owner mounted a Ferrari badge right underneath the bucking Bronco logo. Haha, I see what you did there. At that moment, I thought I was ...
Forget an Old Vespa, This 1945 Salsbury Model 85 Prototype is the Ultimate Hipster Scooter
26 Feb 2024, 22:14 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Let us paint the scene for you; you're cruising down the street in the especially hipster section of Brooklyn, although any trendy place for upwardly mobile tech dufuses and starving artists works just as well. You're pretty content ridin...