Mat Watson and the carwow team are currently in America doing some wild things - like dragging the Tesla Cybertruck against the GMC Hummer EV behemoth or racing classic vehicles such as the 1992 Dodge Viper or the Porsche 930 Turbo. Wait, what?
One of the few professional journalists who actually belonged at Tesla's first Cybertruck delivery event held during the final hours of November, Mat Watson got the chance to play a little with the fully electric full-size pickup truck and tell us about his experience. Of course, he also rocked the quarter-mile drag with the Cybertruck against the Hummer EV – an unmissable experience, indeed.
However, it seems he also had some spare time between the modern shenanigans. Thus, he oddly started fiddling with all sorts of classic models. For example, he raced a Ferrari F40 against a Bugatti EB110 – and if you think that's a quirky race, then how about seeing Mat and the team running an 800-hp old-school AWD Honda Civic against a modern foe, the Audi RS5?
Anyway, (again) thanks to a bit of assistance from the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, California, he was able to secure a pre-production 1992 Dodge Viper and race it against another crimson classic – the famed 'widow maker' 930-series Porsche 911 Turbo. Interestingly, he's a British guy trying to win races in a German machine and duking it out with Luna, the representative from Petersen, who is Italian and holding the banner up for an old American sports car!
That's not the only quirkiness, by the way. However, the race between these vintage rides is genuinely awesome – and not just because they're stick-shift wonders lacking any safety systems like ABS or modern catalytic converters so the monsters can scream at will. Nope, it's also because there's an art to driving these 'relics,' and both Mat and Luna send it overboard for the sheer pleasure of doing anything to win the traditional digs, roll races, and the brake test categories.
Far from us spoiling the viewing pleasure of seeing the 1992 Dodge Viper – equipped with the well-known V10 and a six-speed manual transmission – duke it out with the 930-series Porsche 911 Turbo, rocking the iconic boxer-six and just a four-speed manual. So, we will not tell you who won – only that surprises and missed gear changes are abundant.
Oh, wait, I cannot abstain myself – Mat got his experienced racing 'buttocks' handed to him by Luna, who won for the Dodge Viper both the quarter-mile digs and then obliterated him in the brake test! Yep, we agree with him – Mat was indeed in another time zone with that non-ABS braking performance, the one where you're 'miles' behind your opponent!
Aurel has aimed high all his life (literally, at 16 he was flying gliders all by himself) so in 2006 he switched careers and got hired as a writer at his favorite magazine. Since then, his work has been published both by print and online outlets, most recently right here, on autoevolution. Full profile
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