Category: Race Cars

Volkswagen of America contacted us to inquire about having 1107 on static display in Detroit later this month and in Washington D.C. as part of Red Bull’s Global Rallycross races. (As you know, 1107 and a VW raced by some guy named Tanner Foust both appear in Forza Horizon 2).

So I called Romy and “Can we do this?” and he said “No way, the car’s in a million pieces getting ready for Vegas 2 Reno.” Ok, so I get that.

So I call my dear friend Cyrus Roohi of GFP Motorsports, who raced the Baja 1000 with us back in 2013 and we make a deal to have his car (which is in one piece) as 1107 and have it go on display. He was like “Hell yeah!” and VW of America was like “Let’s do this!” Our sponsor Mad Media, which did the design for 1107’s wrap fired off the digital files to Pure Graphix in Fredericksburg, Virginia and Lifetime LED Lights shipped Cyrus a 30-inch and a 13-inch light bar to complete the look. The awesome folks at Bilstein are also helping us out with some new shock housings. (Thank you all very, very, very much).

1107B was buttoned up earlier this week and loaded on an automobile shipper on Wednesday headed for Detroit. 1107B will be on display at the Detroit Global Rallycross race July 25-26 and then in Washington, D.C. on August 15. Once the races are over, VWoA is dropping the car back off at Cyrus’s place, though it’s street legal and he could probably drive it from the DC display if he were so inclined.

There may be more in the works…

Here’s more photos from the wrap session.

Next time we pack more alternator belts.

We conducted the first of a planned several test weekends out at the off road test track north of Sparks this past weekend and a good time was had by all. Except until our transmission, which had a grand total of 40 miles on it, broke.

Greetings from FOB Dingo.

We kicked things off with a basic first aid class courtesy of team medic and Chase 3 owner Chuck Gianni. Most of our time was focused on putting various tourniquets on Rosh.

We also went through the tool and spare parts bags to figure out what we had and what we needed and dispatched folks off to get replacements. I checked out all our radios.

Anyway, we eventually started driving and got a good number of laps in. Brought the car in to make some tweaks before begining the night driving testing and promptly blew the transmission. We’ll have it dialed in time for the Hawthorne 225 Night Vision race in mid-July.

More photos…

What started as a discussion with a respected automotive writer over legislation barring people from marrying inanimate objects worked its way toward how incredibly awesome the Porsche 917 in Gulf Oil livery looks.

It just so happens one of those 917s (No. 2) resides at Canepa Design two blocks from where I work. I drop by now and again during lunch to see how it’s doing.

A Google search for “Why is the Gulf color scheme so freaking awesome” led me to my new friend Wade Johnston, a designer out of Kansas City or thereabouts who addressed just this subject, brought to his attention by a friend who probably shares my passion for the Gulf.

Wade, who lives in an awesome house, distilled it down to the phenomenon called “Equiluminant Colors”.

Wade turned me on to “Go Faster: The Graphic Design of Racing Cars” by Sven Voelker, which I promptly ordered.

The good news is this is likely the first book to look at graphic design for race cars. The less good news is it says, for the most part, teams just winged it. Unless you’re BMW. And most of the imagery in the book is recreated with model cars instead of using photos of the actual vehicles.

Regardless, it’s inspirational in thinking about a new color scheme for 1107. Things are in the works.

Lastly, Steve McQueen was a bad ass.