Benny Kirk
1,648 ARTICLES
Illegal Model S Stunt Jump Viral Video Reveals a Worrying Brand Image Problem for Tesla
27 Mar 2022, 02:53 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / There are plenty of valid criticisms of Tesla as a carmaker, a brand, or a cultural institution. Most of the time, these criticisms are levied at the company itself. Or just as prevalently, the founder and CEO of the whole operation. But this t...
Airbus E-Fan X: The Bold Hybrid-Electric Airliner That Fizzled Into Vaporware
26 Mar 2022, 23:12 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / As we've said here before, electric aircraft are a completely different ballgame compared to electric cars, at least as far as engineering is concerned. Because weight is the sworn enemy of battery EVs, electric airplane designs that manage to...
Electric Muscle Cars: Blasphemous, or an Inevitability?
25 Mar 2022, 19:33 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / A few things in this world are pretty much inevitable in 2022. Taxes, Thanos, climate change, mediocre reboot movies, memes, and we'll add electric cars being held in higher esteem than internal combustion. Lots of people in the car enthusi...
81 Years Ago, the Tuskegee Airmen Obliterated Color Barriers and the Luftwaffe
25 Mar 2022, 03:07 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Give or take a couple of days, 81 years ago, a group of African American pilots formed an Army Air Corps squadron that destroyed quite a bit more than the German Luftwaffe's morale. A group that shattered color barriers and showcased to th...
Kalashnikov UV-4: An All-Electric Taxi Designed by a Russian Military Tech Company
25 Mar 2022, 01:23 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / If you thought the idea of Kalashnikov building an electric car was bonkers, would them building a fully electric quadricycle taxi be less or more so insane? Well, if the level of lunacy is inversely proportionate to how small the vehicles are, the...
This Sopwith Pup Replica Has Us Ready To Put On Flight Suits and Goggles
24 Mar 2022, 00:14 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / The number of genuine First World War vintage military airplanes still known to exist across the globe grows smaller and smaller as each year passes. The number of airworthy examples of these aircraft is even smaller still. Even so, it's s...
This 2015 LaFerrari is the Most Expensive Car We Could Find on Autotrader
23 Mar 2022, 19:16 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Every so often, we like to play a game where we look through autotrader.com to find the absolute cheapest cars we can find, just for a laugh. But the last time we tried to do this, all we could find was a $500 2007 Chevy Trailblazer. Not quite the ...
YouTube Clown Buys Cheapest Ferrari 458, Leaves His Haters Looking Like the Fools
23 Mar 2022, 18:44 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / It's very easy to clown on Tyler Hoover of Hoovie's Garage when he buys the cheapest version of whichever cool car he can get his hands on. Especially when the estimate from his master mechanic Dave, The Car Wizard, sends him flying out o...
Kalashnikov CV-1: An EV Designed By Russians, Disappeared Without a Trace
23 Mar 2022, 17:42 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / It's been said that when Mikhail Kalashnikov, creator of the AK-47, met Eugene Stoner, inventor of the AR-15, the two didn't even need to speak the same language to convey how highley each of them thought of the other's designs. W...
Hot Wheels: World Race is an Underappreciated Classic You Should Watch, Here's Why
23 Mar 2022, 03:00 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / You'd expect children's cartoons to have plots as dull as paint drying and characters as wooden as a soapbox derby car careening into a tree. But every so often, something comes along that's legitimately as entertaining when you'...
Clapped Out F-86F Sabre Jet Fighter is a Certified Barn Find With Wings
22 Mar 2022, 23:16 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Aerospace mechanics are the evolutionary apex of the humble car mechanic. In the aerospace field, the margin for error is microscopic, and the consequences for failure are inversely amplified. So it's going to take a crew of peculiarly skilled...
This Crusty 2007 Chevy Trailblazer is the Cheapest Car We Could Find on Autotrader
22 Mar 2022, 19:36 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / It's surprisingly easy to get bored in this profession. So every once in a while, we like to play some fun games in our spare time. Whenever we have some reprieve from covering the microchip shortage until our eyes bleed, we like to ...
Master Mechanic Almost Finished Restoring This 1983 Wagoneer, Then Catastrophe Struck
22 Mar 2022, 19:09 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Dave, the Car Wizard on YouTube, is a legit master technician with decades of experience under his belt. So when his customer asked him to help restore his 1983 Jeep Wagoneer V8, he knew deferring the worn-out engine to a specialist shop was the be...
Doug DeMuro Awe Struck by New Ferrari Monza SP1, a Life Sized $2 Million Hot Wheels Toy
22 Mar 2022, 18:28 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / The Ferrari Monza SP1 is a car you would assume would only exist in whichever Hot Wheels cartoon is popular at the time. Fitting, as it looks like something you'd see the Acceleracers driving around in. But for those who didn't grow up on...
Ferrari 488 Pista Drag Races Lamborghini Huracan STO With $50k on the Line, Who You Got?
22 Mar 2022, 16:59 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Sure, the Tesla Model S Plaid is, at least on paper, faster than either the Ferrari 488 Pista or Lamborghini Huracan STO. But would anyone in their right mind actually pick the Model S over either of those two? Unless you're a fully paid-up me...
USS Langley: Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of America's First Aircraft Carrier
21 Mar 2022, 19:24 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Aircraft carriers are synonymous with strength, power, and the ability to wield them anywhere in the world. But it wasn't always this way. There was a time when carriers were little more than cargo ships with slabs of wood nailed to the top. ...
This Classic 1967 Lincoln Continental Just Got a $4,000 Repair Bill, Here's How
20 Mar 2022, 20:28 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / With perhaps the exception of the Cadillac Escalade ESV or Lincoln Navigator, they just don't build large luxury cars the way people used to. Before automakers were burdened with the federal government up to its trumpet 24/7, this 1967 Lincoln...
This RV Conversion is 50% Old Airliner, 50% Trailer, 100% Amazing
20 Mar 2022, 17:58 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / McDonnell-Douglas lost the airliner wars to Boeing in the late 80s and early 90s before being bought outright by them. That's why the skies over America today are full of 767s and 737s and such instead of DC-10s and MD-88s. But that doesn'...
Pittsburgh Light Rail (T): The Most Useless All-Electric Rail Network in America
20 Mar 2022, 16:36 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Is it a train, a tram, or a case of "honey, I shrunk the New York Subway?" Whatever you decide to call it, this is what passes for a mass transit system in one of America's lesser celebrated major cities. Say hello to Pittsburgh&...
Legit Vermont Farmer Test Drives Word's First Electric Snowmobile, Here's What He Thinks
19 Mar 2022, 19:53 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Morgan Gold and his wife Allison were once a couple of city slickers who dreamed of ditching urban nothingness for an honest life on a farm. By 2022, they'd just about 100% completed that speed run. Nowadays, they have startup tech companies s...