My Black Brick

In case you missed the Ghost Riding fad from a couple years ago, consider yourself lucky. Based on a video from Mista FAB, Ghost Riding involves every parent’s nightmare of kids jump out of the slowly cruising family truckster and dancing next to and on top of the vehicle, instead of sitting safely buckled into the front seat.

I was originally going to embed this video of two dudes ghost riding a Volvo 940 (?) for this post. Instead I had to go with this classic of a guy standing of the roof of his Ford Ranger as it slowly makes its way up the curb and into a telephone pole.

I suppose having the “fastest Volvo in Thailand” is an important feat but if you’re pulling mid-8 second quarter-mile runs I imagine it would place you as one of the fastest Volvos in the world.

Karnkluay is a highly modified 244 built with the Volvo Club of Thailand. The name “Karnkluay” seems to come from the animated baby elephant “Kharn Kluay”, who wanders away from his mother to become a war elephant for his king. Nice.

What amazes me about this video isn’t the eerie sound coming from the engine bay (is that a turbo spooling?) or the odd headlight covers. No, what’s most disturbing is the crowd of onlookers closely packed around this screaming ride that’s about to pull an 10 second quarter mile run. How old is that kid at :40? Two? Yikes.

Here’s a compilation of Karnkluay’s mid-8 second runs. Note the crew putting all their weight on the rear deck to help with the burnouts. Their clothes must have been coated with rubber after these 3 runs:

I’d seen a bunch of Smart cars on a trip to France back in 1997 and thought they were pretty cool. Back then the emphasis was on the collaboration between Swatch design and Mercedes Benz engineering. Now that they’re available in the states, the selling point seems to be gas mileage.

They can cruise at a pretty good clip, but it looks like some drivers on American roadways can’t handle it. There’s a thread on the Smart Car of America forums documenting drivers who become enraged at being passed by the Smurfmobile:

I have had lots of people on the highway speed up as I am about to pass
them. I have had people check their speedo and do a double take.. its a
ton of fun passing them while they think they are going faster than
general traffic. Audi owners are especially peeved and almost insulted
by my passing them for some reason. I guess its all part of the fun of
driving my smarty.

…
I get it mostly when sitting at red lights with multiple straight
lanes. The vehicle next to me HAS TO beat me off the line. I’ve seen a
few people so interested in beating me off the line that they almost
get into accidents.

Someone even made a video.

Can we assume the pink flames on the back of this brick demonstrate that it runs as slow in forward as it does in reverse? Or that it has a bad backfire problem?

via That Crafty Bitch