Two years ago BFGoodrich treated me to one of the best weekends in Vegas I’ve experienced to date. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Mint 400, I got the chance to come out and to get a taste of what the Vegas event is all about. I got to see some of the classic rides that used to tear around the deserts between Vegas and the California border. I got to have a lovely dinner with some of the wildest names in the scene, and I got to see the pre-show that leads up to the parade that sends the rigs out to do battle for the event. But by far and wide, the most memorable part of that trip was The Legends Rally ride and drive event that we did earlier that day. Basically, a bunch of journalists were thrown into unmodified Polaris RZR 1000 EPS UTVs and we got a barely-controlled tour of some of the trails and roads with speeds that were still plenty rowdy. I spent quite a bit of time behind the wheel and when I wasn’t driving, Steven Olsewski from Off Road Xtreme was. Neither one of us was scared to put that Polaris through it’s paces…Olsewski has experience in the desert and I…well, I have no self control. What can I say? There’s something about an empty gravel fire road that demands I haul serious ass on it.

The top speed of the RZR 1000 EPS that we were driving was a limited 80 MPH. So, suffice it to say that regardless of which spec this is, that Darren Parsons was probably doing at least that in this video. The hottest RZRs currently can seat four people comfortably and have 181 horsepower. Great…that’s three things a UTV does better than the Chevy Cruze I beat on daily. One trip down and of these trails and that Cruze would no-joke fall apart, cartoon-style. There’s a reason why RZRs cost as much as a nice used car…they will take an ass-kicking like none other even in stock form!