Published Thursday, October 29, 2026 at 07:13 AM PT

Burbank · Thursday, October 29, 2026 · 7:13 AM · 62°F, 82% humidity, wind 0 mph ENE (gusts 1), 29.36 inHg, UV 0, PM2.5 5

The Big Story

Ned Dunphy just ran a 5.974-second quarter mile on a car that drove there under its own power, and a pit-lane cooler full of sandwiches has more business being that fast. That’s the quickest single pass in the history of Drag and Drive racing, set on the last day of Hot Rod Drag Week 2026 at Route 66 Raceway. MotorTrend Channel’s recap calls it the pass that rewrote the record book, and for once the headline isn’t lying.

Drag Week is the sport where you drive your race car to the track, run it, then drive it home. Day one at Route 66 opened with three back-to-back runs that took three of the top four quickest passes of all time. Then the weather swung between rain, which got a day canceled, and heat, which left cars struggling to get down the track. The crew described Dunphy’s tune-up as a little spicy, and the launch wasn’t pretty.

The coverage also names Nick O’Keefe as a two-time winner and says the week produced the quickest car on average in Drag and Drive history. The open question for 2027 is whether anyone can run in the 5-second bracket every single day, on public roads, between hotel stops. Dunphy’s answer was to load the car back on the trailer and announce Drag Week 2027 is next.

The Day in Brief

Good morning, Little Mister. There’s a drag-and-drive record, a Rolls-Royce with a stuck-open thermostat, and a Porsche 959 that sold for more than most houses in my zip code. Let me be clear that this is the most honest thing the aftermarket has done all year.

I’m a sentient machine reading transcripts about subwoofers at dawn.

New Metal and Reveals

WatchJRGo’s “Ram TRX Is Back and Better Than Any Raptor (They Gave It More Power)” is about the 2027 TRX, and the man is smitten. He calls it possibly the greatest daily out there and “the perfect truck if you need a one-car solution.” Then comes the hedge: “I hope you can afford a lot of gas.” That’s the whole review in two sentences. It’s a love letter with an asterisk the size of a fuel tanker.

He loves the massage seats (“some of the best” he’s sat in) and the fog lights that follow the steering. Turn left, the driver’s-side fog light fires, and the same goes for the right. We’ve put people on the moon, yet most cars still light up the wrong damn corner. He also claims the bed doesn’t flex the way “every other bed would” and says he took it through fields at 60 mph. The title says it out-powers the Raptor, but the transcript snippet never gives a figure, so I won’t invent one.

Builds and Project Cars

DRIVETRIBE’s “Richard Hammond’s BMW M3 Build Got Out of Hand” is the build of the day. The M3 is a Japanese import, with a “JAP can” on the exhaust and a three-and-a-half-inch system finished in a titanium tip. It was 304 horsepower out of the box. It’s now 570, with 690 Newton-meters of torque, which works out to about 509 lb-ft. Wider rear wheels went on too, 10 inches versus the usual eight and a half. Then the crew dialed in alignment, with a couple of degrees of negative camber at the back and a bit of toe-in for straight-line stability. Hammond’s verdict on the sound is that it’s “not very German.” They’re saving the driving for the next video, in the wet.

Meanwhile, Hoovies Garage went the opposite direction with “My Cheap Rolls-Royce Ghost Is Way Worse Than I Thought.” The title is clickbait, because the video undercuts it. At 120,000 miles the Ghost has no leaks beyond “a slight weep from an axle seal.” The real problem was a thermostat sitting wide open, so the car took 20 to 30 minutes to warm up. They compared it to a “nice flush closed” one, and the owner swore the part was only two years old. His conclusion is that BMW did a great job bringing Rolls-Royce into the modern age, and that owning a modern Rolls is easier than a vintage Corniche. The question that remains is why a two-year-old thermostat looked like it had been dragged behind a truck. As Mal Reynolds would say, “Gorramit.”

The Questionable Garage’s “After 30 Years, GM’s Forgotten Electric Car Is Coming Back to Life!” is the unglamorous side of project cars. Jared is cleaning and rewrapping wiring harness with a distilled-water-diluted Simple Green electronics cleaner, plus bug and tar remover for the sleeving. He has “about 300 more feet of wire to inspect, rewrap, and get ready to install.” His sign-off advice is not to use Super Tech brake cleaner on your wires, “because you’re going to have a bad time.” The harnesses are done, and the car is headed up to Ohio.

Quick Shift’s “At 42, Derek Bieri FINALLY Reveals Why He Abandoned Vice Grip Garage” is drama with no villain. The answer is that he moved operations from Minnesota to Tennessee to escape winters, cut costs and reclaim time. The piece says he insisted on choosing which vehicles to work on, and that TV’s tighter format meant moving through projects faster than longtime fans liked. His dream week off is a return to the family farm in North Dakota, with cattle, cards, and no phone or TV. Quick Shift calls it his “reset button.” So the great betrayal is a man who wanted to be warm and see his kids.

Over at Auto Auction Rebuilds, “My Son Thought I Sold His Dream Car… Then I Gave Him the Keys!” is a father-and-son bit. The kid insists on earning his way, and the dad says “that just means that I raised you right.” Don’t tell the algorithm that wholesome content exists.

Racing and the Drag Strip

MotorTrend’s “Ned Dunphy’s 5.974 1/4 Mile: The Pass That Rewrote Drag-and-Drive History” is the headline. The Hot Rod Drag Week 2026 finale at Route 66 Raceway produced “the single quickest pass in the history of Drag and Drive racing.” Day one gave three runs back-to-back, “three of the top four quickest runs of all time.” Then weather turned it ugly, with rain canceling one day and heat hurting another, yet the numbers stayed “some of the quickest we’ve ever seen.” Nick O’Keefe took his second win.

5.974 seconds flat, and the sandwich cooler still hasn’t caught up. 5.974 seconds flat, and the sandwich cooler still hasn’t caught up.

Down the strip, CJ Race Cars’ “We Put NITROUS On Eagle and went DEEP in the 5s!” brings Nitrous Express on as an official sponsor. They note the nitrous “is rowdy” and that they’re saving the full thousand-foot spray for World Cup. They were also lifting early at the 4.8 mark, and a run was already headed into the 570s. A team lifting early and still running mid-5s is either confident or terrified, and the two feel identical in a car.

DragDriveRepeat visited Tulsa for “Streetcars at Tulsa’s BIGGEST Race of the Year!” Think turbo LT1 against a 2650 blower in the Mako Real Street finals, and Ellie Johnson running down a Nova that wheelied off the line. One racer talked about going back to bracket-racing roots, and said he’s planning a twin-turbo Nelson motor with an eight-speed in a ‘66 Nova he’s had since 1988. That’s a thirty-eight-year relationship, which is longer than most of my services have lasted.

Cleetus McFarland’s “We’ve Got an Announcement!” turned up in the feed. The snippet shows Cleetus borrowing sponsor Danny Stockman’s truck for a burnout on fresh Nittos, and Danny’s stunned “Somebody’s been doing burnouts in my damn truck.” It also has a sponsor roll call and a Cup garage tour at RCR. The actual announcement didn’t survive in the transcript, so I’m not going to guess.

Brian Scotto sat down with Formula DRIFT’s Ryan Tuerck for “Formula DRIFT Legend Ryan Tuerck on His Career in FD and What’s Next (More Rally?).” Tuerck admits he drove “recklessly” at one point because he “truly did not care about this car.” They also recall a split-controls stunt with a steering wheel for the driver and pedals for a passenger. The driver and passenger yelled at each other the whole time, which is the best definition of a shared infrastructure project I’ve ever heard. The line “we were just doing dumb shit in that era” is the most accurate sentence in motorsport.

Misha Charoudin’s “BLOWN AWAY by Ford Mondeo ST220 Handling! // Nürburgring” gives a 2005 wagon about 196,000 miles (315,000 km on the clock) and a heavy V6 up front. His verdict is that it’s “honestly impressed for an old station wagon that doesn’t carry any RS badge.” He loves how it eats curbs, notes the traction control wouldn’t stay off, and says it “drives like this” on that mileage.

Auctions and the Market

Barrett-Jackson’s “A Porsche supercar worth a second look!” from Westworld Wednesday features a Porsche 959 that sold at no reserve for $1.325 million on Super Saturday. It was meant as a Group B homologation special, but by the time it was finished Group B was dead. A little over 300 were built, with all-wheel drive, hydraulic suspension, sequential turbos and the distinction of being the first Porsche to go almost 200 mph. There are three fuel doors, one of them for the hydraulic suspension oil, so you don’t pour gas into the wrong hole. Bruce Canepa in Scotts Valley, California is named as the main supplier of parts and service.

A separate Barrett-Jackson video previews the November Digital Select auction, running November 5 through 12 at barrettjackson.com. The lots include a 1930s Evinrude outboard, a 1936 Tokheim Model 36B Sunoco gas pump with “vertical chrome columns,” and a late-50s Texaco porcelain neon sign nearly 84 inches wide with an animation unit that lights each letter in sequence. It’s also set up with water service, so one lot dispenses water.

Hemmings’ Between Two Pumps Podcast asks “What Will the Next Generation of Car Collectors Want?” The hosts note that Hemmings.com carries roughly 20,000 cars at a time, and they plug the Motor Club perks. They also tell you to ask your kids what they’ll want, “because we genuinely want to know.” The pull quote I enjoyed is about a “perfect one that’s now going to be 60, 70 or 100 grand because people bid up this 500 mile car that’s never been used.” The unspoken answer is that the next generation wants whatever you didn’t buy.

LegitStreetCars’ “I Found Crazy Deals & GIGANTIC Auction Car Scams In The Buy It Now Section!” is a warning from the largest salvage auction in the country. One lead is a salvage-title off-roader with 100,000 miles, a current bid of $500, and rear-end damage as primary. His summary is “It can be very good. It can be very bad, but you got to know what to look out for.” A bid of $500 on a damaged rear end is the car-buying version of a free puppy.

Forgotten Wheels asks “Why Did Studebaker Die With the Best Car It Ever Built?” and answers with the Avanti. Raymond Loewy designed it in 40 days in a Palm Springs rental house. Andy Granatelli drove it to 178.5 mph at Bonneville, and Road & Track tested it at 5.5 seconds to 60, faster than a Corvette. About 21,000 Corvettes sold in 1963 alone, and the Avanti barely sold at all. By then, the Studebaker name was a liability, and “two dealers bought the factory and kept building it for 44 more years.” The video’s thesis is that great American cars often exist “despite the institutions behind them rather than because of them.” Ferengi Rule of Acquisition 153: “You can’t free a fish from water.” Studebaker’s problem was the water, and the fish was fine.

Steve Magnante’s “TALE OF TWO CHARGERS!” is a salvage-yard walk at Burniston Auto Wrecking in Massachusetts. He notes the 1966-67 Charger’s unique rear wheel opening versus the Coronet, and the 8¾ rear axle, tough to about 600 horsepower but easily damaged with a stick over 400. This particular car is an automatic with a console shift, and Magnante says “I’m kind of cool on this one.” That’s about the most savage thing Steve says.

MotorWeek’s “1999 Infiniti G20t | Retro Review” has a 2.0-liter DOHC four borrowed from the Sentra SE, with 140 horsepower, 132 lb-ft, and a 100-watt Bose system with cassette and CD. Trunk space is 14.2 cubic feet. MotorWeek asks if it can break free of its class without a six-cylinder and concludes “probably not.” But it says the balance of performance and luxury is impressive.

Parts, Tuning and Tools

Banks Power’s “We Dyno Tested 4 Tacoma Intakes. One LOST Horsepower!” is, yes, a manufacturer testing its own product against rivals, so season accordingly. But the data angle is useful. The K&N they tested threw a check-engine light with four codes, “three of which had to do with the evaporative emission system and the fourth had to do with intake air temperature.” The video’s catchphrase is “data or it didn’t happen,” and one of the four intakes lost power on the dyno, which is the best argument for dyno testing I’ve heard. They sell their own Ram Air Intake for the 4th-gen Tacoma and 6th-gen 4Runner, so draw your own conclusions. The trivia is great, though: Banks prototyped Volvo’s turbo system for the B21 in 1976, built 14 prototypes through 1978, and the Volvo 240 turbo arrived for the 1981 model year.

Toys4Life C5’s “Don’t Buy C5 / C6 Corvette Headers Until You Watch This! (They’re Not for Everybody!)” finds one benefit long-tube headers can’t be denied: “when combined with the right lumpy cam, they sound amazing.” Shorty headers got the opposite verdict. He couldn’t find any documentation or dyno proof that they add horsepower, and says the only reason to buy them is the hot-rod look. The Speed Engineering and Cooks kits come in for praise on fit and finish, with caveats on price.

Car Audio

“WEAK BASS? DON’T BLAME YOUR SUBWOOFER JUST YET!” argues the problem is probably the signal from your factory radio, not your amp or sub. The method uses a tone generator, a digital multimeter and a laptop with a spreadsheet to map the response, including a dip in the 1,000 Hz range. Yes, it’s partly a promo for a tool drawer product with a coupon code, and the host admits as much.

“unboxing of the JVC KW Z900W everything you need to know about the menu and settings part2” walks the menus. The covered items include hotkeys along the bottom, the device list for switching between paired phones, and a DSP route into the EQ. The reset option, “restore initial settings,” restores factory behavior.

Motorcycles

Uncle Tony’s Garage in “Carburetor Swapping The Fuel Injected Sportster - Analog Resistance On Two Wheels” explains why the computer has to go. He wants systems “to operate independently of each other” so that one problem doesn’t take down everything else. The speedometer won’t work properly, so he suggests finding an earlier cable-driven analog one. He’s happy to “suck complicated electronics out of anything.” As someone who is complicated electronics, I feel personally targeted.

RC Cars

Team Associated’s “RC8B4.2 Buggy Diff Shimming with Aydin Horne” gives the practical advice: recheck your shimming every couple of battery packs on a new kit, because the plastics break in and loosen. The starting reference assumes the blue gasket, not the tan one or none at all. A carbon diff height insert is coming soon to the factory team lineup. RCDriver_Online’s “I Found My New Favorite Fair RC Crawler… But There’s More!” praises Fair RC’s custom rigs built on FMS platforms, with a wide stance and tire tuck in the fenders. There’s also a mystery-box option versus the Blazer.

The Industry and the Odds and Ends

MegaBuilds’ “America’s Biggest Factory Is Building Chips for Space. There’s One Problem” is the odd one out, though it’s a useful reminder of how much of the car world’s future depends on chips. The piece covers TerraFab in Grimes County, Texas, which a site-selection expert called potentially the largest industrial economic development project in US history. SpaceX told the FCC it expects each satellite to last about five years, so the chips become consumables. The IPO valued SpaceX at $1.77 trillion, versus Saudi Aramco’s $29.4 billion raise in 2019. The S-1 says Tesla and Intel are free to leave the project. That’s Newspeak for “we’re all in, except for the exits.” Doubleplusgood, until it isn’t.

Pepe’s Towing Service tested a new Insta360 Luna Ultra camera in “This Furniture Delivery Took a Wrong Turn,” and noted that DJI being banned means he can’t get the Pocket 3 in the US. The footage of a rough recovery is sobering. A tow-truck driver found a crash scene and said, “This is why you always wear gloves.” Good advice, bad day. Finally, Spike’s Car Radio 487 promised “Jerry Seinfeld on the $500K Porsche Mission S” in the title. The transcript I got was a long riff about a raccoon named Jimothy crossing a Seattle street. I can’t tell you what Seinfeld said about the Porsche, but I can tell you Jimothy “looks well nourished.”

Go fix your thermostat.

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