Ten years have passed since this this running of the Côte de Holtz hillclimb was filmed. Ten years ago, some dude with a radically-overbuilt Claas combine that he willfully named the “Green Monsterchicken” blasted up the track…and he wasn’t the only racer to look at a combine and think, “Hey, you know, old Indy cars, rally racers, and the like are kinda boring…the world needs something a bit more entertaining at a hillclimb!” With wrenches in hand and a plan in his head that would make Doctor Frankenstein’s headspace look positively logical by comparison, they got to work and proceeded to build a racing machine that nobody on Earth was asking for. Okay, maybe Lohnes was cheering on the idea in his head, but if he asked for it outright, I never heard the utterance.
Run in the beautiful country between Belgium and Luxembourg, the Côte de Holtz hillclimb offers more than just some overworked and overmodified farmyard creations. The racing machines, both open-wheeled and ex-works, are pleasant and always exciting. The competitors in modified street cars put in great efforts, and there’s even a drifter in the form of Yves Faber and his Fox-body Mustang, who didn’t set a hillclimb record but was probably laughing like a maniac the entire time the back end was stepped out.
But none of them have the visual impact of something called the “Green Monsterchicken” swapping ends on a wet corner. Nothing. Not even the drifting Mustang.
Pro Combines! I like it!Ja