Benny Kirk
1,667 ARTICLES
AEA June Bug, A Pioneering V8 Bi Plane That Royally Ticked Off the Wright Brothers
30 Sep 2022, 03:33 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / As the Hush Kit YouTube Channel put so eloquently in their video The 10 Worst American Aircraft, "the Wright Brothers were as litigious as they were diligent and busily sued anyone who built a successful aircraft." In short, the Wright Br...
Rocky Auto's 1971 Nissan Skyline Packs Blasphemous Toyota V8 Power
29 Sep 2022, 22:47 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Before the Nissan Skyline became the automotive analog to Godzilla, it was a quirky Japanese interpretation of an American muscle car. Although to be a true muscle car, you must have a V8. Puns about questionable-tasting vegetable cocktail drinks a...
Artemis I's SLS Rocket Safe In VAB From Florida's Worst Superstorm, Here's What's Next
29 Sep 2022, 20:38 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Very little has gone to plan in regards to NASA's Artemis I mission since its SLS rocket with Orion Command Module and European Service Module in tow left the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. But as the surro...
Ultra Rare 1971 Olds 442 W30 Convertible Rocks Bruce Springsteen 8-Track
29 Sep 2022, 19:10 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Few collections of three numbers elicit the emotion and the passion of the 442, Oldsmobile's greatest contribution to the first muscle car renaissance. But only a small fraction of production for the lauded 1971 model year sported a convertibl...
The BMW S65 Is an All Time-Great Engine, but Not Without Flaws or Controversy
28 Sep 2022, 19:55 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / A few months ago, we showed you all there is to know about the history behind the BMW M3's first V8, the S65 engine. We highly recommend you go check that out. But it's important to show both sides of the story. The S65 may have been a ge...
Oldsmobile Diesel V8: The Engine That Swore Americans Off Diesels for the Next 40 Years
28 Sep 2022, 03:55 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Diesel passenger cars are everyday mundane fare in Europe and Asia. But in North America, they're the domain of heavy-duty trucks only. Why is this? Well, it's more a matter of price than anything in 2022. Which is as much a side effect o...
Fieseler Fi 156 Storch: A German STOL Warplane With V8 Power, Rommel's Favorite Plane
27 Sep 2022, 21:38 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / If you had to pick one German airplane from the Second World War that served in every single campaign from Barbarossa through the fall of Berlin, most would immediately pick the Messerschmitt Bf-109, and rightly so. But there's another lesser-...
1947 Ford Super Deluxe Packs Ford Racing Surprise Under The Hood, Oozes Restomod Swagger
27 Sep 2022, 17:42 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / When the average person thinks of the word "deluxe" in a modern context, you're bound to conjure an image of a fast food meal with fries and a drink. But back in the 40s, the term was less mundane. Indicative of some tangible increas...
Artemis I's SLS Rocket Reverses Back to World's Largest Garage, Braces for Hurricane Ian
27 Sep 2022, 03:34 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / At 9 a.m, on the morning of September 26th, NASA's weather analysis team declared a Hurricane Condition IV status on an incoming tropical storm named Ian. In the wake of back-to-back launch scrubs owing to issues with the SLS rocket's num...
The Cadillac Blackwing V8 Was an Unappreciated National Treasure, Here's Why
27 Sep 2022, 01:10 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / It's V8 Month here on autoevolution. A month where everything with eight cylinders in a V-arrangement gets some time in the spotlight for our reading pleasure. The V8 we'd like to show today is one of those "blink, and you'll mi...
Curtiss OX-5 V8: A Deep Dive Into America's First Great Airplane Engine
26 Sep 2022, 22:11 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Glenn Hammond Curtiss personified the eccentric billionaire aviator at a time when Elon Musk's grandparents were just toddlers. Everyone from Howard Hughes to Musk himself fit perfectly into the persona that Mr. Curtiss formulated decades earl...
The New 2023 DS 3: Another Delightful, Quirky French Crossover Americans Can't Buy
26 Sep 2022, 19:49 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / French cars and fashion don't share the same spotlight as often as one would think. But when they do, it's always worth talking about. Even if the car in question is unobtanium in North America. It's the new DS 3, and no matter how m...
Buick Nailhead: The Mighty, Beating V8 Heart of the SR-71 Start Cart
24 Sep 2022, 23:58 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / In the 21st century, the LS/LT V8 is the king of General Motors performance cars. Apart from a couple of bespoke Cadillac V8s here and there, the LS pulled the load for all of GMs V8 performance vehicles in the 2000s. But back in the first muscle c...
Sebastian Vettel's Replica F1 Halo Device Is Wall Art for a Petrolhead's Living Room
24 Sep 2022, 03:19 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Suppose you ever wondered why all modern Formula One cars drive around sporting a weird ring-looking doohickey above the cockpit. In that case, we recommend you hop into a VR Grand Prix Race Simulator in first-person mode and watch how other racers...
This 455 HO V8 Pontiac GTO Makes Modern Sport Coupes Cower Like Hatchbacks
24 Sep 2022, 01:08 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / They don't build muscle cars like they used to. As cliché as it is, it's true on several levels. When the third-gen HEMI and the LS go to pasture soon, we'll say it ten times more. But to understand why 60s muscle car fans kee...
V8 Powered 1967 Chris-Craft Super Sport is Classy in Ways No Modern Speed Boat Is
23 Sep 2022, 19:54 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / We've covered our fair share of speedboats since we've branched off into non-automobile-related vehicles at autoevolution. The bulk tends to be more modern, from an era when the gap between a small luxury yacht and a speed boat gets blurr...
Toyota and Kenworth Push Hydrogen-Electric Truck Drivetrains to the Limit in Los Angeles
23 Sep 2022, 18:10 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / As far as passenger cars are concerned, battery-EV tech is finally reaching the point it's a viable platform for everyone to transition to. But when it comes to heavy-hauling 18-wheeler big rigs, it's a little bit more complicated than th...
Messerschmitt Bf-108, the V8 Powered Little Brother of the Bf-109
23 Sep 2022, 04:00 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / When you think of the Luftwaffe during World War II, you think of the Messerschmitt Bf-109 and not much else. Sure, the Fw-190 is a wonderful second fiddle, but the 109 drove fear into the hearts of its adversaries in a way few fighters ever have. ...
Three Grand To Fix Two Items? Welcome to the World of the Used Maserati Quattroporte V8
22 Sep 2022, 19:57 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Many of our readers are owners of second-hand sports cars they couldn't have dreamed of owning when they were new. We respect those kinds of people around here, but there are some pitfalls to beware of. Ones that feel more like gravity-bending...
Custom 1981 F-250 V8 Box Truck Hauled Produce to New York Markets for Four Decades
22 Sep 2022, 17:37 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Rochester, New York, is a city where cars and trucks go to rust back into the Earth from whence they came. That's why it's an eternal surprise to see this stunningly, heck, even magnificently preserved 1981 Ford F250 regular-cab box truck...