Many of the coolest motorsports we all enjoy today have roots in the Southeastern United States. Pro Mod drag racing was a largely southern creation, stock car racing, swamp buggy racing, and others have all come from gearheads below the Mason-Dixon line. One of the newest and coolest trends emerging down there is that of high powered rock buggies literally racing up hills and gulches that are nearly impossible to walk over, let alone drive up. Yes, these things first appeared out west, but the western scene is more about crawling and climbing (aside from King of the Hammers, of course) than it is hammer down, high speed, off road violence.
The fabrication and tubing on these machines are both in leagues of their own. As you’ll see in this video, the buggies are literally built to survive multi-story falls without so much as a nick in the paint. Like anything else, once basic machines have evolved into rolling art work in the best way. Rather than waste time with a body, they wear their exo-skeleton proudly. Most of these buggies now carry fuel injected V8 power. LS engines are super popular (suprise!). They sit on tires that range from the high 30-inch to the mid 40-inch range. The axles are specialty built and bomb-proof. Four wheel steering is pretty standard equipment now. In the case of this buggy, a parachute would have been nice.
Watch this thing claw its way almost to the top of what is really a cliff face and then lose its grip on terra firma, plummeting what has to be what, three of four stories to the ground. It is one thing to drive off the road and go off a cliff. It is wholly another to fall off the cliff, while driving up it! The driver in this wreck were reported to be OK and the buggy sustained minimal damage. By rights if they crashed anything else both people inside would probably be dead.
Press play to see a wild rock buggy crash!