Benny Kirk
1,649 ARTICLES
Myasishchev M-55: A Retired High-Altitude Soviet Spy Plane That Might Make a Comeback
1 Dec 2023, 03:58 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / The Lockheed U-2 is a spy plane so exemplary at its job that the US Air Force is still hesitant to get rid of it, even almost 70 years after its first flight. The Dragon Lady, as people often call it, leaves a legacy unlike any other in the history...
Kharkiv V-2: The Soviet Tank Engine That Refused to Go Out of Style for Eight Decades
29 Nov 2023, 22:51 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Let us paint the scene for you. The day is September 1st, 1939, in the Soviet Union, and you're a middle-management engineer working at the Kharkiv Locomotive Factory in Ukraine. While a particular Austrian painter is busy imposing his will ov...
M1A1 Abrams Tanks Spotted Near Ukranian Front Lines, Is the Jig Up For Russia?
28 Nov 2023, 21:09 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / It's said that in the dog days of World War Two, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, the deranged, rotund head of the German Luftwaffe, once said the day he saw P-51s over Berlin, the jig was up. Almost 80 years later, 31 American M1A1 Abrams...
Wicked 68' Plymouth Road Runner Sports #17 of First Hundred Hellephant Crate Motors Built
28 Nov 2023, 19:27 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Back in 1964, the original Chrysler Elephant 426-cubic-inch HEMI V8's 425 horsepower figure was one of the most impressive in automotive history up to that point. With its genesis in the crucible of motorsport and enough displacement to make a...
Stroked LSX-Swapped E53 X5 Is More Chevy Than BMW Underneath, Built for the Trails
28 Nov 2023, 17:24 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Typically, when you see a mid-2000s BMW X5 in your rear-view, you get out of the middle lane and give the driver a nice wide birth before they come barreling at your position at what must be 30 over the limit. But not all X5s are driven by mad lads...
Crusty ’62 Cruisers Inc 16-Foot Runabout’s Spent the Last 32 Years in a Shed
27 Nov 2023, 20:28 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / A good portion of our audience doesn't give a rat's you-know-what about boats. But Barn finds are arguably what everyone around here loves more than anything else. So when we found a venerable pocket rocket of a 1962 Crusers Inc 202-V run...
This 1966 Pontiac LeMans Tricks People Into Thinking It's a GTO, It Sure Ain't
27 Nov 2023, 17:40 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Let's paint the scene for you. You're a Gen-Z petrolhead passing an indistinct storage unit in the quiet neighborhood of Smithtown, New York, when a familiar front fascia hones into view as you drive along. You can't help but do a do...
2000-HP '68 Camaro Drag Car Makes Fighter Plane Numbers at Disused WWII RAF Base
25 Nov 2023, 00:43 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / During World War Two, the best way the Royal Air Force could make 2,000 horsepower reliably was to employ the 37-liter, 2,240-cubic-inch Rolls-Royce Griffon. In the days when "no replacement for displacement" really was the law of the lan...
David Burton's K24-Swapped AWD Ford Escort Humbles GTRs and Gaps Hellcats
24 Nov 2023, 21:25 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / The second-generation North American-spec Ford Escort never lit the world on fire. In a world where Civics, Corollas, and heck, even the Ford Taurus shared the road with the lowly Escort, there was no chance the moniker could match the heights it r...
Polaris 2023 Fall Trail Grants Top $100,000, Keeps Trails Near You Safe and Gorgeous
23 Nov 2023, 01:23 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Believe it or not, Polaris is a Fortune 500 company these days. That's right, the lovable makers of small-but-mighty ATVs, side-by-sides, snowmobiles, and the occasional military vehicle ranked 496 on the Fortune 500 list as far back as 2018. ...
Legit P-51D Mustangs Are $3 Million Luxury Items, This 70% Scale Replica Is a Real Bargain
21 Nov 2023, 21:25 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Airworthy North American P-51 Mustangs don't come up for sale too often anymore. But when they do, they can easily make the price of modern 300 mph-capable hypercars seem like bargains. The only one we could find now is on sale at a slight dis...
Think Classic American Muscle is Unattainable? This '76 Plymouth Fury Sport Says Otherwise
21 Nov 2023, 20:45 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Allow us to set the scene for you. The year is 1976, and your working-class, factory-worker old man just pulled up in this brand-new Plymouth Fury Sport. It's been a few years since the great oil crisis of 1973, after which the feds decreed th...
HEMI-Swapped, Ultra-Rare ’74 Datsun 260X Is the Coolest Drag Car on Craigslist Right Now
21 Nov 2023, 20:05 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Back in the mid-1970s, the Datsun Fairlady Z line used to take muscle car's lunch money almost for sport. As the '73 oil crisis laid waste to American muscle, the opportunity was right for Datsun and other JDM brands to make a hostile tak...
This 1947 Whizzer/Monark Motorbike Is As Fast as Modern E-Bikes and It's for Sale
21 Nov 2023, 18:45 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / We've tested quite a few powerful e-bikes lately. Ones that can accelerate quickly enough to keep up with in-town automotive traffic without a hint of fuss or difficulty. But it's one thing for a modern electric bicycle with more torque t...
Slightly Crusty '63 C2 Corvette Split Window Awaiting Your Rescue in Kentucky
19 Nov 2023, 21:24 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / It really is fascinating how a seemingly small alteration to one particular model year of a classic car magically makes it more desirable and, at the end of the day, far more valuable, too. Just look at this 1963 Chevy Corvette C2. Believe it or no...
Kevin Hart’s LT5-Swapped ’69 GTO Is the Ultimate Pontiac Restomod, Built by Detroit Speed
19 Nov 2023, 17:05 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / When the ICE era comes to a forceful close, and we're all forced at the end of a proverbial rifle to drive battery EVs, we'll probably look at the year 1969 as the finest year for internal combustion engines in its 150-year history. But e...
Taurus SHO-Swapped '36 Ford Tudor Melds Best of the Great Depression and Great Recession
19 Nov 2023, 03:52 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / It's easy to look at pre-war Ford vehicles and think they all sort of look the same. In the era before Ford's cars and trucks stopped using a shared platform, especially during the mid-30s, the difference between a Ford sedan, coupe, or p...
Dakota Customs Supercharged HEMI-Swapped Two Door Wrangler is the Ultimate 4x4 Sleeper
18 Nov 2023, 16:01 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / We bet some of you out there totally forgot Jeep still built a true-to-form, two-door Jeep Wrangler. Over 90 percent of all new Wranglers sold these days are four-door models, so it's no great shame on anyone's part if their jaw drops whe...
Convair 990 Coronado: How a Failed Airliner Found a Robot Tank Buddy at NASA
17 Nov 2023, 22:41 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / The internet at large has been ablaze recently with stories about a radio-controlled scale model of a World War II German King Tiger tank whose job was to drill holes in over-pressurized Space Shuttle tires during ground tests. Now, whether a Secon...
Kia Flexes Facelifted 2024 Sorento, Adds X-Pro and X-Line Packages for Off-Road Junkies
16 Nov 2023, 20:36 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Remember when the Kia Sorento used to be a mediocre SUV? One that, admittedly, was cheap enough to make people consider it over a Honda CRV or Toyota Rav4 but could also never hold a candle to its rivals. If you didn't already know, spoiler al...