Red Bull has money like no one’s business and on a pretty frequent basis they will shovel some of the cash that they no longer have room for towards awesome projects. This is one of those times and the video they made to support said awesome project is 100% top shelf. Here’s the deal. In the 1970s, there was a model of Holden sold in Australia called the Sandman and it was essentially a surf wagon that a dude could drive to the beach on a Friday, sleep in for a couple nights and live out of while catching waves and making sweet, sweet love to the ladies. As you will see, they were nicknamed, “Shaggin’ wagons” back in the day for obvious reasons. The car stands as iconic even today because it harks back to some of the ideals that people in Australia hold dear. Those would be V8 power, fun on the shore, and making sweet, sweet love. Perhaps not even in that exact order.
Cut to today. Red Bull tasked one of their Aussie V8 SuperCar teams to build a modern racing version of the Sandman to serve as a testbed for some technology that they’d like to see in the series like fly by wire throttle and paddle shifting of the transmission. The guys in the Red Bull race shop modified the sedan into a wagon, added surfboards to the roof, retained the V8 SuperCar powerplant, and essentially created one of the neatest corner burning wagons ever.
Prior to seeing this video we had never heard of the Holden Sandman before but after seeing it we want one. We’re not going to ruin the video for you. This whole thing is fantastic and you are going to love the film below. Press play to see this whole thing come together.
