Category Archive: Barnstormin'
Barnstormin’: Baghdad Bob And The New Power Of Words
Remember the guy you see in the image both above and below? His real name is Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf but we here in the USA came to know him as Baghdad Bob during the 2003 invasion of Iraq....
Barnstormin’: A Drag Racing Revolution Repeats Itself Nearly 50 Years On The Dot
As a sport of ritual and repetition, drag racing is nearly unparalleled. That whole repetition thing goes a lot deeper than burnout, backup, stage, and run though. In the case of the current state of...
Muck Tested, Kid Approved: We Try New Muck Daddy Hand Cleaner and Scrubbing Wipes
When it comes to options of cleaning up your grime covered hands at the end of a wrenching session there are a myriad of them to choose from. Some of them work well enough and some of them are total...
Judging The 2015 Gran Turismo Awards At SEMA – We Had The Gloriously Impossible Task
About a week ahead of the 2015 SEMA show I got a call from the people at Gran Turismo and they asked if I would be interested judging the Hot Rod class of the 2015 Gran Turismo awards at the event....
Barnstormin’: My Favorite Cars And Trucks From SEMA 2014
(Our 2015 SEMA Show coverage will begin today and in honor of that, I wanted to look back at my favorite stuff from the 2014 SEMA show just to remind myself “what was hot” last year....
Barnstormin’: Of Dually Trucks, Drag Strips and Return Roads
As a fan, a writer, an announcer, or in any other light, drag racing has always been a sport about details to me. Some people get wound up in the macro element of things with the huge noise, smoke,...
Barnstormin’: Menace, Tumult, And Gulliver Starts To Strain Against The Ropes
This is likely going to be a bit of a ramble, so I am warning you of that right off the hit of the throttle here. People have asked me if the races I announce run together. For the most part the...
Barnstormin’: A Confirmation Of The Adage That “Fast Is Cool” In Nearly Every Gearhead Language I Can Think Of
I’ve always had the thought that anything that was fast immediately qualified it as being cool. I think I have tried to really live by that here at BangShift over the course of the nearly...
Barnstormin’: Off Days and Days Off – A Mental Download After A Hectic Few Months
It has been too long since I put my fingers to the keyboard and pounded out a column. Time management has not exactly been my friend since the early Spring when both the automotive news cycle cranked...
Barnstormin’: Is Indy’s High Tech Demolition Derby Deserving Of All The Hate? He We All Forgotten History?
(Photo credits: Greg Huey lower/Joe Watts above) – There is no doubt that ratings for the 2015 Indy 500, the 99th running of the contest will be higher than they have been in years. How could...
Barnstormin’: Enjoy Bizarro World While You Can – This Cannot Go On Forever
The last three weeks have given me one of the best cross slices of the modern hot rodding universe I have ever experienced. I bounded from an NHRA event in Houston to the ECTA season opener in Ohio,...
Barnstormin’: Notes From A Fun Weekend On The Road With The Lohnes Clan
As whacked out as my schedule has been this Spring, it really gets cranked to 11 starting this weekend when the races and events really stack up on each other. That being the case, my wife and I...
Barnstormin’: Of Steam Engines And Small Tires
(Photo credit: NMCA/Steve Baur) – No, as best I understand there are no plans for any sanctioning body to release a “steam outlaw” class in the near or distant future but I did...
Barnstormin’: Profits, Progress, and Paranoia
As racing season has cranked up again and I am spending some time flying the friendly skies, it has allowed me to crank up my bookworm mode pretty hard. I often run book reviews here on BangShift and...