I don’t know which adult in my life actually had the bright idea to cut me loose on a dirt road in a gutted and half-prepared Pontiac, but that decision sealed in some fates. Actually, not just the Pontiac…the wrecked Plymouth cop car, the spray-bombed mid-1970s Chrysler product, the Chevy LUVs that were thrashed on because they were $150 trucks at best back then, and so many more all got the field car treatment at one point in time, and they taught me several lessons. Sideways control on dirt, steer-by-throttle, slide angle and proper pitch, and just how much weight plays a factor into how far you’re going to go when you toss a car sideways on slick grass…didn’t matter if it was a Nissan Stanza that was about to spit a drive axle or the Comet that was treated like a Dukes of Hazzard villain’s ride, I was able to get behind the wheel and get the practice in. Valuable lessons, all of them. I would strongly encourage some fast laps in a grass field as part of driver’s education. Then again, I encourage any addition to driver’s education…

Vice Grip Garage has had this little Monza race beater sitting somewhere on the scale between the crusher and “that old car in the woods” for a bit now. Truth be told, it’s actually a semi-prepared amateur racing machine and ever since we first learned about it, we wondered if our favorite northerner was going to ever put a race car to good use. Turns out, he did, and it looks like he had a hell of a ball running it…regardless of just how close to death the little four-banger was or how good the Monza’s Exxon Valdez impersonation was.