Benny Kirk
1,645 ARTICLES
91 Years Ago, America’s First Purpose Built Aircraft Carrier Hit the High Seas
25 Feb 2024, 20:44 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / At the moment, the US Navy employs 11 aircraft carriers across its fleet. For those not aware, this accounts for just over half of all the world's current operation aircraft carriers currently in service. From a certain point of view, each of ...
Not Flashy, Not Stylish, This Taylorcraft DCO-65 Is an Affordable Warbird Lookalike
25 Feb 2024, 18:48 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / When it comes to private light aviation, it feels like you're limited to flying Toyota Corollas with wings at times. Not to speak ill of Cessnas and Mooneys or the fine folks that fly them. But it's hard not to feel like they all look the...
Half LS3, Half LT5, Pete Aardema's '34 Ford Has Frankenstein for an Engine
25 Feb 2024, 17:53 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / For what feels like the past nine decades, hot-rodded 1930s Fords have a staying power that other hot rods can only dream of. So great is the desire to shove modern hardware into a timeless classic package that we, as gearheads, are still obsessed ...
Ultra-Rare Cadillac Eldorado Truck Conversion Fights for Life in South Carolina
25 Feb 2024, 16:40 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / If you thought the Chevy Avalanche-based Cadillac Escalade EXT was a part of the brand's first-ever dealings in the pickup truck market, you'd actually only be half right. Because although you can't call this 1975 Cadillac Eldorado p...
Roy Wallace's LSx Swapped '62 Cab-Over Jeep Makes Modern 4x4s Tremble
25 Feb 2024, 15:28 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Do you ever get the feeling that all modern 4x4s sort of all look the same? No, seriously, you probably couldn't tell the difference between a Defender, Wrangler, or G-Wagon until one was right up in your rear-view mirror, its driver buzzing o...
Genuine '57 Chevy Tri-Five US Army Staff Car is Ready for Civilian Service
24 Feb 2024, 18:55 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / The Tri-Five era Chevy Bel Air might legitimately be the most famous American automobile of the 20th century. So much so that when one imagines an image of 1950s Americana, the Bel Air is almost always in there somewhere. But not every second-gener...
Here's What Palworld Has In Common With the Wright Brothers and Mercedes-Benz, No Really
23 Feb 2024, 16:42 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / In the annals of gaming history in 2024, there's bound to be a substantial section dedicated to an action-adventure survival game from a little-known Japanese dev-team called Pocket Pair. In most cases, this wouldn't be anything relevant ...
Stellantis Flexes First BEV in North America, 2024 Fiat 500e Enters Production in Turin
21 Feb 2024, 20:54 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / For so many in North America, their first chance to lay eyes on the battery-electric future of the iconic Fiat 500 came from the Euro-spec La Prima at the Los Angeles and New York International Auto Shows back-to-back in 2022. Back then, Fiat promi...
Preserved 81 Chevy Impala Has Piece of American History for an Engine, Not in a Good Way
20 Feb 2024, 23:22 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / There's nothing like boxy American land barge sedans from the 80s and 90s. For reasons that logic or standards of good taste can't explain, there's something about the floaty, cloud-like road mannerisms that come from two and a half ...
Sick of Coyote-Swapped Mustangs? Tony Angelo's V12-Swapped Fox Body Soothes the Soul
20 Feb 2024, 16:54 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / If LS-swapping every vehicle under the sun was annoying, doing the same thing with a Ford Coyote motor instead is bound to be just as irritating. Seriously, it feels like every single engine swap worth talking about these days features one of these...
Led Zeppelin Manager’s Ferrari 246 Dino Hits the Auction Block, Is It Worth Seven Figures?
20 Feb 2024, 15:55 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / In a way, all modern hard rock bands from a variety of different niches and disciplines can trace their roots back to Led Zeppelin. In the same way, modern Ferraris can trace their roots back, at least in part, to the 246 Dino. But what happens whe...
Zombified 1955 Packard Patrician Is Begging To Live, It’s Up to Us To Save It
20 Feb 2024, 04:18 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / There's one question we often come upon when covering vintage cars. That being, at what point is a classic vehicle truly beyond saving? At what point have the countless years of wear, tear, rust, and dust accumulating on one automobile made it...
Slightly Crusty '78 International Harvester Scout II Packs a Japanese Diesel Surprise
19 Feb 2024, 03:09 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / In some trippy parallel universe where International Harvester kept making passenger vehicles, the Scout II is the modern darling of the off-road scene, not the Ford Bronco or Jeep Wrangler. At least, you could claim that if you wanted to sound lik...
Part Light Truck, Part Tiny Home, This 1996 Toyota HiAce Brings JDM Weirdness Stateside
18 Feb 2024, 22:32 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Van life, glamping, and off-the-grid living are just a few names attributed to people who leave their lives of rent payments and urban decay to live the life of a nomad. But for all the fancy Tik-Tok videos and blog posts you might see, living in a...
Meet the Cyan GT, Half Classic Volvo P1800, Half S60 TC1 Race Car, 100 Percent Amazing
17 Feb 2024, 16:19 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / It's nothing new for a boutique automotive tuning shop to take a timeless classic car or truck and transform it with new hardware into something profoundly different and arguably better than what it was to begin with. But of all the classics o...
Ram 2500 Inside, Classic Dodge Outside: Ex-USAF D200 Pickup Was the Pride of Mecum
16 Feb 2024, 04:54 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / We love restomod trucks around here, as should come as a surprise to absolutely nobody. But that doesn't mean we can cover every single custom truck worth reporting on in one calendar year. We do miss one or two on occasion. But just because i...
Knightscope K5: The Robotic Policeman On Wheels That Embarrassed the NYPD
16 Feb 2024, 01:46 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / If you've never been to New York City, let alone spent long periods there, you might not know that the city and its law enforcement, the NYPD, have a somewhat rocky relationship at times. From the borderline Wild West on the streets in the �...
Polaris Stuns the UTV Sector With the All-Electric Pro XD Full-Size Kinetic
14 Feb 2024, 05:18 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / There are two distinct time periods in the history of contemporary UTVs: the eras before and after the Polaris Ranger XP Kinetic hit the scene. As the first truly modern all-electric UTV to make a significant impact, the level of refinement Polaris...
GAMI G100UL Lead-Free Avgas Starts Trials in California, Costs More Than the Normal Stuff
13 Feb 2024, 05:32 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / We're told again and again these days that the environmental ramifications of private and commercial aviation are so severe that we ought to drastically decrease the level of global air traffic, lest we poke even more holes in the ozone layer ...
Stellera Design's VTEC-swapped Mk III Mini Melds JDM and British Engineering Beautifully
12 Feb 2024, 22:26 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / The OG Mini Cooper isn't exactly the kind of car that needs a thumping-great engine to be fun to drive. In fact, it's almost antithetical to the nature of the Mini to shove an engine in its rear any larger than the average sewing machine ...