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Car Records

Cool Car Stunts

April 18, 2018

Car stunts are some of the most exciting clips on the site. These drivers risk life and limb to perform incredible record-breaking tricks and skills on four wheels. (This article was first published in YouTube: World Records.)
Car Records

Wheelie Something

Pulling a side-wheelie (driving on just one front and back wheel) in a car is a technically difficult and ludicrously dangerous feat. To drive along on two wheels at breakneck speed is taking it to another level. The speed record on two wheels was last set in 1997, so hats o to Finnish stunt driver Vesa Kivimäki, who finally broke the record in October 2016. Driving a BMW 330 fitted with tires specially developed by sponsor Nokian, Kivimäki clocked 115.74 mph in his record- breaking jaunt along the runway at Seinajoki Airport in the southwest of Finland.

Completely Loopy

Remember the model cars that looped-the-loop on orange tracks on your living room carpet? Now the Hot Wheels toy manufacturers have taken to performing their stunts in real cars. At the 2012 X Games, Tanner Foust and Greg Tracy raced through a loop 60 feet tall on a death- defying life-size version of the Hot Wheels orange track. Foust, a stuntman in movies such as Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift and Iron Man 2, said he had to desperately fight blacking out as he experienced around 7Gs of G-force during the stunt.

Tired Out

The Australians love a burnout—where the brakes keep a vehicle stationary while spinning its wheels, causing the tires to heat up and smoke due to friction. Burnout competitions thrive in Australia, where drivers use modified cars with no rear brakes. At the Summernats car festival in Canberra, billed as Australia’s biggest horsepower party, 69 cars took part in the world-record attempt for a simultaneous 30-second burnout. Dozens of expensive tires were shredded, and some even ignited into small rubber fires, as the entire area filled up with clouds of smoke.

Monster Monster

At 11,500 pounds in weight, 10 feet 6 inches tall, and riding on 66-inch tires, the legendary monster truck they call Bigfoot was attempting to take back its world long-distance jump record. Bigfoot was the original and most famous monster truck, but had not owned the record for 11 years. It was a matter of pride. Finally, in 2012, after a year long modification, Bigfoot 18 was ready. Driver Dan Runte hit the ramp at 80 mph and took off . . .

Ramping It Up

This is the closest you will ever come to seeing a flying car. It was New Year’s Eve in Long Beach, California, in 2009, and 20,000 people had come out to see all-action driver Travis Pastrana try something really crazy. Pastrana, a rally champion turned stunt driver, launched his Subaru Impreza STI rally car off a ramp on the Pine Avenue Pier at 91 mph. He soared over Rainbow Harbor before successfully landing on a floating barge 269 feet away—almost 100 feet more than the former jump record.