Drag Race

The Yugo is arguably one of the worst cars ever made. While it was marketed here in the states from 1985 to 1992, the Yugo (aka the Zastava Koral) was actually produced in varying models from 1977 all the way up until 2008.

I’m often jealous of the guys over at Motor Trend. I’d love to be able to drive the sweet cars they get their hands on all day long. At least that’s what they do in my imaging of the job.

I once took my kids to a NHRA Top Fuel event in Texas. It was our first time to a drag race ever, and I had no idea just how much noise dragsters could generate. We got a sample with the burnouts, but that was nothing.

Jay Leno and Tim Allen are both certified car nuts. The two have faced off on Jay Leno’s Garage on several occasions, and they are back at it again in a sleeper drag race. Leno is racing his 1966 Dodge Coronet with a 426 Hemi under the hood.

What happens when you take an already fast and lightweight sports car with a V10 engine and strap a pair of turbos on it? You get the Underground Racing Audi R8, packing 1100 rwhp. That is a load of power, and the car can rocket down the quarter mile as a result.

This blue 5th-gen Viper looks like it’s mostly stock from the outside, but it is far from stock under the hood. The driver of the ride says that it has a custom built motor and twin turbos that can push out as much as 1500 wheel horsepower.

Autocar put together a drag race that pitted the Ariel Atom 3.5R against a Yamaha YZF R race motorcycle and a Monster Energy Citroen DS3 Rallycross car. I always like to see how race cars stand up to street-legal cars, even if the Ariel Atom 3.5R is a street car in the loosest sense of the term.

For the latest installment of its World’s Greatest Drag Race, Motor Trend got their hands on a diverse array of cars to see which one would turn in the best 1/4-mile time. It’s a completely unscientific test, and with some cars sporting manuals and others having automatics, it’s a little apples-to-oranges depending on driver skill.

A Ferrari and a snowmobile meet up at a drag strip – that sounds like the start of some kind of lame car joke. But the video surrounding this actual match-up is anything but silly. 19Bozzy92, the person who posted the video on Youtube the other day explained that he was attending the Modball Rally’s 2015 track day at the Varano de’ Melegari racetrack in Italy when he saw the snowmobile pull up to the line to compete first against a Ferrari F430 Spider and then against Ferrari 458 Spider.

Its a match that sounds counterintuitive – a powerful, $250,000+ V8 powered Italian supercar vs. a $105,000 all-electric American luxury sedan. But based on horsepower and drivetrain alone, you might even give the edge to the Tesla, with the 458 sending 596 horses to its rear wheels only, and the P85D pushing more than 690 horses to all four wheels.

We’ve seen the Tesla Model S go up against the Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat. Here’s Motor Trend matching the P85D with the Challenger’s sedan brother. But instead of judging their merits on one – or a billion – quarter mile races, the overall outcome of which will most likely be in the electric sedan’s favor, Head 2 Head host Jonny Lieberman chose to weigh which car is “the ultimate American badass.”

We have seen the Tesla Model S P85D dominating some very powerful cars on the streets and racetracks with its insane acceleration. We have seen the P85D battle a Ferrari, Corvette, and several other cars. One of those other cars the P85D raced was the Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat.

While the Nissan GT-R is one of the fastest production cars ever made, this video proves that with the right engine and tuning prowess, even mighty Godzilla can fall at the feet of the right vehicle.

I’ve spent enough time at a racetrack over the years to see guys turn up numerous times in exotic car acting like asshats only to find out they can’t drive, and their Ferrari gets trounced by a Miata on the track.

So the Tesla Model S P85D has 691 horsepower and an all-wheel drivetrain, while the Corvette C7 Stingray has “just” 450 horses and a rear-wheel drive configuration. However, the ‘Vette has about almost a 700 pound weight advantage, so they’re actually surprisingly well matched on a drag strip.