The Friday Fast Lane: six wheels, electric Peugeots and stadium trucks

Friday, 28 September 2018

In this week's Friday Fast lane: six-wheeled madness, Aussie cops do horrible things to a Kia Stinger and stadium trucks are awesome.

When too much is not enough

It is not often that you could top your modified six-wheel drive F-150 Raptor in the 'extreme' stakes with your next vehicle, but Hennessey has done just that.

Hennessey has decided to do the 'whole six-wheel mutant madness' thing on a Chev Silverado now. We are pleased.

Meet the Hennessey Goliath, an even more extreme 6X6 creation than the VelociRaptor (yes, they really called it that) based on the redesigned 2019 Chevrolet Silverado Trail Boss.

Where the VelociRaptor was powered by a heavily tweaked version the standard Raptor's twin-turbo V6, the Goliath packs Chev's 6.2-litre V8, but with a 2.9-litre supercharger strapped on it for good measure to produce 519kW of power and 843Nm of torque.

But just in case that is not enough you can also get an even more powerful 595kW version…

**READ MORE

A swoopy clown livery on an over-styled car? Yeah, the Western Australian police are all over that.

* Hennessey's monstrous Camaro ZL1 dubbed 'The Exorcist'

* Stinger is a Kia sedan from Seoul with soul

* Vaughn Gittin Jr's 900hp Ford Mustang drift car is all about the noise**

Hennessey plans to build just 24 Goliaths, with prices starting at US$375,000 (NZ$562,000) and that does include the cost of the donor Silverado. The best bit though? Hennesey is making it available for export to international markets. Got a spare half a mil or so lying around?

Here's a new electric Peugeot. Probably not the sort you were expecting though...

Kia cops it in Oz

The Western Australian police force has taken delivery of the first of 50 Kia Stingers that it will be rolling out as pursuit vehicles over then next 12 months and, oh dear, what has it done?

The Stinger was never the prettiest of cars to begin with and its awkward blend of blatant Audi styling with additional intakes and weird lights chucked randomly at it to cover the most glaring plagiarism wore out its welcome fast, but that ham-fisted (sorry) application of a garish police livery sure doesn't improve things any…

Still, it would make a pretty intimidating thing in your mirrors with lights ablaze, so that is probably all the police really car about. Well, that and the searing performance too…

Peugeot tools

Peugeot started out in 1810 making saw blades and hand tools before diversifying into many, many other things, including salt and pepper grinders, weapons and bicycles.

Oh, yeah, and cars too.

Vaughn Gittin Jr. went sideways around the Nurburgring. Except for the parts where he was airborne.

But now the French manufacturer is going back to its roots with a new range of electric hand tools that it is revealing at the Commercial Vehicle Auto Show in Hanover.

The company has dabbled in cordless drills since last year, but the new range also includes a jig saw, circular saw, orbital sander, angle grinder and a multi-function tool.

Of course, it could just all be a low key way to get into electric vehicles - a couple of hundred power tool batteries plugged into the boot of a 308? It could work. Plus you could also whip one out to do any quick roadside repairs, should something fall off.

Stadium Super Trucks are awesome. That is all.

Who cares about the Aussie Supercars when you have these things on the same tracks?

Exactly how many tyres does it take to go around the Nurburgring sideways?

Speaking of awesome videos, earlier in the week we bought you the first in a series of videos from Ford of Vaughn Gittin Jr. drifting his Mustang around the mighty Nurburgring.

Well, now Ford has given us more details about the effort, including the fact that it required three sets of Nitto tyres to drift the full 20.76 kilometres.

As well as going through numerous tyres, Gittin also destroyed a drone (you see it at the start when the Mustang flicks a perfectly accurate stone up at it) and reached a top speed of 241kmh, which was limited by the Mustang's gearing.

Oh, and while drifting is forbidden on the Nordschleife, some drivers have drifted sections – including two drivers performing drift demos during a race – and Ford says this is the first full-on drift attack of the complete circuit.

'One of the craziest parts of the video is the jump on Pflanzgarten,' said Gittin.

'The speed of that entire section was intense and immediately upon landing I had to flick the car hard sideways to slow down to make the sharp right hander. There was zero margin for error. Damn that was crazy.'

Yes it was. And awesome.

Hell, here's the video again, just because.