I’ve seen rally cars take flight like a stone from a sling. I’ve seen drag cars go barrel-rolling down the strip after attempting to put the nose of the car into orbit. I’ve seen a field of NASCAR entrants cut down by a third because someone’s car drifted two inches to the left. A Rally Fighter perform a front flip and keep on driving like nothing happened. Superchargers take flight because the engine hiccuped a little nitrous. In the twenty-five years I’ve actively followed automobiles, I thought I had seen it all. And while I’m sure I’ll re-write the high-water mark a couple of more times before I shuffle off of this mortal coil, I will say that I did not expect to see this. Neither did my wife, who started laughing loud enough that I thought she had found a yearbook picture of me on the internet.

The Pig N Ford races are held in Tillamook, Oregon, have been going on since 1925, and combine the fun of driving a stripped Model T with the excitement of a LeMans start and the fury of one seriously pissed-off pig underneath an arm. At the sound of the starting pistol, the drivers run over to a bin and grab a live pig and hold onto it for dear life. They then run over to the Model T, crank-start the sucker (with some angry pork making that task so much harder), then hop in and take off. These Model T’s have not been converted to the standard layout, either: except for a foot accelerator to free up one arm for cuddling some pre-sausage, the controls are as Ford shipped them…which means that if you aren’t practiced in running one, you have no hope in hell of moving forward. The driver completes one lap, stops, puts Angry Pig #1 into a bin, grabs a new Angry Pig, and repeat until three laps are completed. As for the pigs? Well, they can claim to be fast food before they become…well…