Street Racing

When it comes to modified cars, the main goal seems to be high horsepower. However, having a well-sorted car means building it to send that power to the ground, as efficiently as possible. With this in mind, That Racing Channel (TRC) is giving us a YouTube video of one such car – a sinister-looking C7 Corvette, which may be one of the most well-sorted high-horsepower builds, you will ever see.

The YouTube channel Four Eyes is mostly known for the host’s 2007 Ford Mustang GT project car. However, he now has a new project – a 2000 Dodge Viper GTS. The goal is 700 wheel-horsepower without any form of forced induction, but while it’s stock, he decided to see how the 20-year-old snake measures up against some of the Muscle cars currently on sale. Can the old Viper still perform?

I do not approve, promote, or encourage illegal street racing at any level. Street racing, however, does happen. A lot. Here I am to tell you about the unspoken rules of street racing that should, at least, make you and anyone involved a tad safer. This list of unspoken rules, should also teach you a thing or two about street racing that you may have missed during your illegal racing forays "down in Mexico."

Furious 7 is still raking in cash hand over fist at the box office, but moviegoers won’t have to wait very long to see the next installment in the ever-popular Fast and Furious franchise. At the annual CinemaCon convention, Vin Diesel announced that Universal Pictures will make an eighth movie – tentatively titled Furious 8 – and it will hit theaters April 14, 2017. The news was quickly confirmed by the studio on Twitter.

Though no other details were revealed about the next movie, this wasn’t unexpected. Previous reports have the Fast and Furious movies stretching out to a total of 10 movies, and that is likely solidified by the strong performance of Furious 7. It took just about two weeks for the movie to gross more than $1 billion, making it the highest-grossing film in Universal Pictures history as well as making it the seventh highest-grossing film of all time, and that number continues to grow.

Continue reading to learn more about the next franchise in the Fast and Furious franchise.

Experiencing Furious 7, three truths gradually dawn. First: That this is the very first film in the franchise. Not movie — there have been six movies in the series already. This is the first film. Second: From the theater parking lot to the film’s closing credits, something is very, very different this time. Something has changed, fundamentally. Third: What’s changed, most fundamentally, is us.

Make no mistake: Furious 7 is by no stretch some misty-eyed, maudlin wallow in days gone by. It is absolutely as fun, fast and full of over-the-top action as it ever was. But in every way, the series has matured. The cast, storyline, direction, cinematography and even the cars have taken on an element of almost gritty realism, a fantastically deliberate intensity far more akin to "Ronin" than any F&F before. Nevermind Ja Rule — a cameo from Liam Neeson wouldn’t have seemed out of place in Furious 7.

But in a much larger sense, there’s no way anyone who grew up with this series can walk out of it without thinking about the context. Both the context of the film itself, and themselves in context to it. In a very real way, with no hyperbole, this film may be a long-overdue look into the mirror for an entire generation. There’s a reason it’s only 10 points behind "Gone With the Wind" on Rotten Tomatoes.

However, as every longtime fan of this franchise knows, the real show always starts in the theater parking lot. So, that’s where this review begins.

Continue reading to learn more about the film.

Nitro Warriors 2 - AFTERBURNER by VanguardPictures

A little over a year ago, Vanguard Pictures released a stop-motion film, called Nitro Warriors, that really made an impression on all of us. It was cool, fun and offered three minutes worth of good times.

This year, the crew is back with a sequel to Nitro Warriors. Part 2 is actually called "NItro Warriors 2: Afterburner, and similar to the first episode, it involves a lot of Hot Wheels cars, some fancy cinematography, and plenty of action made even more impressive by the stop-motion nature of the film.

Nitro Warriors 2: Afterburner is also a little longer than the first one, with car races and flying cars being thrown into the mix as well. But the best part, at least as far as we’re concerned, is the ending. We wont’ spoil any details but just so you know, there are things that happen in the film that you probably won’t get to see in real life.

Click past the jump to watch the first episode of Vanguard Pictures’ Nitro Warriors

When Traxxas first unveiled the X-01 R/C car just after the holidays last year, it billed the car as an out-of-this-world R/C vehicle capable of massive speeds and a matching sticker price.

Well, it looks like all that hype may be justified.

The X-01 was in attendance at the recently concluded SEMA Auto Show, and not only did it justify the $1,000-plus price tag it carried, it did so by unleashing its full fury on an unsuspecting miniature dyno machine.

By “full fury,” we mean maxing out well above 100 mph.

That number certainly doesn’t sound like a big deal for a regular car, but for an R/C car? Yeah, that’s a different story.

Traxxas brought the X-01 to SEMA and placed it on a rolling dyno to show its sick capabilities. And boy, did it impress, as it hit a top speed of 104 mph. Do you know what the wildest part is about this whole thing? It hit 104 mph in just four seconds, something that no other car - real or otherwise - is capable of doing.

Check out the video of the Traxxas X-01 hitting 104 mph at SEMA courtesy of the fellas over at HighTechCorvette.

It seems a little weird that the people behind this three-minute video - producer Brenden Kent and director Paul Greg - spent six months putting it all together, but after watching it, you’re going to understand why it was all worth the wait.

Using an iPhone, an app called Stop Motion HD, and a number of custom-made rigging systems, Kent and Greg managed to produce Nitro Warriors. It features little, performance enhanced plastic toy cars doing their best high-octane toy car chase that would make the people behind Need for Speed stand up and take notice.

The scene is a living room where a Ford Mustang is being chased around by an army of police cars on a busy highway. When that chase ends in failure for the authorities, they sent out a car that can match wits with the Mustang: the Chevrolet Corvette ZR1. Check out the video and find out how Kent and Greg spent the most worth it six months of their lives creating a three-minute toy-car chase video.

Nitro Warriors is worth your time, folks. Take it from us.

Ford is really banking on the Focus ST taking over where the Focus SVT left of in the U.S. market, and they went a rather creative way to grow its buzz even more. Ford needed a commercial introducing the ST as a performance hatchback to the U.S. market, so what better way than to set up a street race involving two Foci STs. This “street race” was held on closed roads and each car was driven by a professional driver, of course.

That was not the interesting part though, as Ford relied on customers to film the event for them. You’re reading that correctly; no camera crews, no sound team, no directors. Just two Focuses, hundreds of screaming fans and a whole bunch of cellphone cameras, digital cameras and likely a few pieces of professional equipment.

Not only is the commercial bad ass (you can see it above), but just the pure concept really got the public excited for the upcoming release of this high performance econo-hatch.

Of course, Ford did have a hand in editing the videos taken by the fans and we are certain the majority of the shots were taken by semi-professional cameramen with thousand dollar equipment, but some of them were obviously by handheld camcorders and digital cameras too.

Our favorite camera operator was a man sitting in the tree at the 0:35 mark in the video. He obviously didn’t get his shot into the commercial, but he gets a shiny gold star for effort. Good call Ford, good call indeed!

Rarely is something both the slowest and the hardest at the same time, but that all goes out the window when you’re talking about the Grand Prix at Monaco. For the majority of the F1 season, the drivers get to open up their cars a good bit. At Monaco, those chances to go wide open are limited to about three, as there are only a three extended straightaways on the track.

Besides those three straights, drivers get to deal with a plethora of intense twists and blind turns that require great care to negotiate correctly. These tight turns all amount to Monaco being the lowest average speed course on the F1 circuit, and arguably the hardest one on the circuit.

Well, the 70th running of this ultra-technical road course is due to start on May 27, 2012 and we’re going to provide a quick preview of what’s to come.

Click past the jump to read all about the Grand Prix at Monaco

Back when the Impreza WRX made its debut, we began salivating, as it marked the comeback of the turbocharged car. Then once the STi came around bearing its 300-horsepower, 2.5-liter H-4 engine, we were officially in love. That love has somewhat dissipated, as the turbocharged market has become a little flooded lately. The STi still has its own little spot in our hearts though.

One of the many things that made the STi so unique was its combination of extreme power from a four-cylinder engine with Subaru’s legendary AWD system. This made, and still makes, the WRX STi one of the most fun cars in the world to tinker around in the snow and ice.

The above video comes straight from Russia showing a rather good driver maneuvering his STi through the icy and snowy streets with a lead car filming him. Not only is the action pretty darn good, but the editing isn’t half-bad either.

Regardless of how cool this video is, we do have to ask you to please not go buy an STi and start sliding around your city’s streets during the next snowstorm. Yeah, it looks cool and you might get yourself a spot on the internet, but its rather dopey, to say the least.

Now that we have given you our parent-like lecture for the day, sit back and enjoy a WRX STi frolicking in it favorite habitat, snow and ice. If you keep a close eye at the 1:19 mark, you can see their fun is almost over, as plow tractors are coming through to clean up the slippery stuff.

First of all, we’d like to greet everyone with a shout out of "Happy New Year!"

There’s no better way to kick off 2012 than hitting all of you where it really matters with the sights and sounds of some of the most exciting auto footage of 2011.

YouTube member, Jorrie2, has made this compilation for all of us, showing supercars and exotics by the manufacturer all prancing, preening, and just flat out hollering, much to the delight of our eyes and ears.

Now that you’re probably still reeling from the revelry of New Year’s Eve, we invite you to sit back, relax, turn up the volume, and hit play. For all the fun you had welcoming 2012, this is our own way of welcoming you to the new calendar year.

11 minutes worth of non-stop action, just the way you want to kick off a new chapter in your lives on an huge and ear-splitting bang.

Enjoy, folks!

The Traxxas X0-1 can hit 0-60 mph in 2.3 seconds and 0-100 mph in 4.92 seconds without even breaking a sweat. Sounds like the perfect recipe for a high-powered supercar, right?

The only caveat is that it’s not an actual supercar; it’s a remote-controlled race car from RC manufacturer, Traxxas. The little ball of lightning is so ridiculously insane that it even has a built-in speed monitor and RPM monitoring. Of course, all of the out-of-this-world characteristics of the X0-1 comes with a pretty hefty price - literally.

Set to go on sale on December 30, 2011 - makes for an awesome belated Christmas present! - the Traxxas X0-1 will come with an eye-popping price tag of $1,100.

Dreamy eyes and itchy hands looking to own the X-01 will have some extra convincing to do to prove to Santa Claus that they’ve been good boys and girls this year.

For our money, it’s going to be extremely difficult to part with over a thousand dollars for a remote-controlled car. But if we still had disposable income to play with, we’d be the first in line at the toy store to fetch a piece of this speed demon.

Depending on where your allegiances lie, the Underground Racing-tuned Lamborghini Gallardo TT can be described as the Suzuki Hayabusa of the auto tuning world and vice versa.

But if you’re looking for something obscenely fast, can you really go wrong picking one over the other?

The short and simple answer is no. So to illustrate just how incredibly powerful these two machines are, the folks from Underground Racing and the people behind the tuned Hayabusa - Shamrock Racing - met up to see of these beasts has bigger claws.

The video appears to be a teaser of a more elaborate production between the two tuning firms. But seeing as we’re getting a pretty good glimpse at what lies ahead, its pretty safe to say that we’re going to have high expectations as to how this race turns out.

Check out the video to see Underground Racing’s 1,550-horsepower Lamborghini Gallardo TT go head-to-head against Shamrock Racing’s 450-horsepower Suzuki Hayabusa.

Henry Ford introduced the automobile to the masses with his less expensive vehicles built on an assembly line. Once cars were being used widely, it was only a matter of time before the human love of competition took over. Dry lake beds and two lane strips of roadway became the first places to test your vehicle against another driver. These non-sanctioned events were essentially illegal drag races that took place throughout the country. A few fans of this growing competition began developing rules and regulations that have led to the NHRA or National Hot Rod Association that we know today.

Speed demons were able to break the 100mph barrier on the Muroc dry lake bed in California’s Mojave Desert, but it was not until 1950 that a man by the name of C.J. Hart was able to open the first official drag strip for racing. As soon as people saw the opportunity to race in safer and well-timed events the sport of drag racing was truly born. This first drag strip ran races until 1959 and by that time the NHRA had multiple national events taking place throughout the United States.

The NHRA has become a larger success than anyone could have imagined and now comprises 80,000 members. Wally Parks was the associations first President and once noted, “we did have ambitions of its becoming a national sports entity. We weren’t planning or marketing geniuses or anything like that. Things happened and we went with our instincts.”

Hit the jump for more details on the History of Drag Racing

Red Bull has more than a few ways of giving us a good ’ol morning jolt. The people of downtown Atlanta can attest to that.

Recently, the energy drink / racing team brought two of their esteemed drivers - Rhys Millen and Ryan Tuerck - to Atlanta for a smoke-inducing drift session as part of Red Bull’s Peachtree Drift Battle. While it wasn’t entirely a head-to-head duel between Millen’s Hyundai Genesis Coupe and Tuerck’s Pontiac Solstice Coupe, the two did provide a highly different way for commuters to start their day.

It’s not every day you get a chance to see rampaging drift cars plowing through Peachtree Street in downtown Atlanta. And as one commuter will attest, we’ll never look at Peachtree Street the same way ever again.

Check out the video for all the pulse-pounding and - in this case, morning-jolting action - as Millen and Tuerck give the innocent bystanders of downtown Atlanta a different kind of wake-up call.

Goliad, Texas – this town is home to one of the purest motorsport events of the year and it’s called the Texas Mile. People from all over the country travel to this location for three days of gasoline fume induced chaos on an abandoned air strip. Nothing makes for a better all-out speed track than a place where jet-fighters used to take off so the organizers have arranged a sort of extended drag race for any participant who wants to sign up.

Since 2003 people have been able to let loose in their motorcycles, trucks, and sports cars on what is essentially a one-mile stretch of open highway. Sure, driving down the historic Route 66 in your classic 1969 Ford Mustang is fun, but being able to put your foot to the floor on a stretch of road where no police officer will do anything about it is the ultimate rush.

Last year, the event was packed and this year it has already sold out so you better be ready when registration rolls around for the next one. Cars have been known to go well beyond the 200mph mark and even crash on the ½-mile slow down stretch, but it’s all about how far you want to push yourself.

Hit the jump for more details on the Texas-Mile Event.

Nothing grips us at TopSpeed more than a seriously dangerous car chase scene while munching on popcorn and sipping on a cold one. Be it special effects or balls to the wall stunt driving, the action entertainment factor is undeniable and just another reason to love the movie industry. They get to do things we mere mortals only dream of doing with cars we only dream of woning. Every new blockbuster brings faster, harder, and more dangerous antics than before, keeping us glued and wanting more.

This collection spans more than thirty odd years proving that older movies with real stunts and no CGI still get our blood pumping, especially when you consider the dangers faced by stuntmen all those years ago. There are hot women, exotic metal, loads of tire screeching, crashes, and huge jumps to reminisce about. Here then, is our tribute to the best individual car stunt scenes Hollywood has to offer.

Hit the jump for the list.

When talking about supercars, there aren’t a lot in this world that can come close to matching the prestige of a Pagani Zonda or a Bugatti Veyron. And if you want to push the exclusivity level up a few notches, try having a Zonda Cinque and a Veyron Sang Noir join forces in one unforgettable street race.

The two cars were spotted in the streets of London where they were joined by a number of other supercars that, apparently, are all owned by a strapping number of wealthy Middle Easterners that are a looking to have a good time.

And as it turns out, their idea of ‘having a good time’ involves racing their multi-million dollar machines without a care in the world and probably knowing full well that in the unlikely event that they wreck these cars, they could just as well afford to replace them with something else in a few days.

And as far as how this supercar race between the Zonda Cinque and the Veyron Sang Noir went, well, you can check out the results by clickity-clacking on the video.

Unless you’re dealing with a high-powered, tuned-up Audi, a race between a Lamborghini Gallardo and an Audi S4 is about as fair as a two-legged horse participating in the Kentucky Derby. Fortunately, the Audi S4 shot in this racing video in Somalia had enough power to remain competitive against a Gallardo and even managed to stretch the Gallardo’s legs with an extra passenger on board.

To be fair to the Gallardo, its driver looked like he wasn’t even trying and if it did decide to pound the throttle, it probably would have left the modded Stage 3 Audi B5 S4 eating its thermoplastic dust.

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of taking a leisurely drive along Mulholland Drive, you should know that the place comes with a lot of history. A lot of street racing history.

Ever since its creation, it was to be a scenic road with the sole purpose of attracting drivers of all speed intents. Since its build back in the 1920s, Mulholland Drive has become a quite popular attraction for tourists and local Angelinos alike.

Check out this particular video that was made a few years back chronicling the history of Mulholland Drive and how it came to be - from generation to generation - quite arguably the most famous stretch of pavement in Los Angeles.

Yes, in our eyes, it’s more famous than Beverly Hills.