Benny Kirk
1,723 ARTICLES
GMC Syclone Marlboro Special Edition: The Most Politically Incorrect Pickup on Earth
2 Apr 2022, 02:42 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / It doesn't matter where you are in the world. Tobacco companies aren't allowed to advertise in public just about anywhere. But that wasn't the case three decades ago. Back in the early 1990s, Phillip Morris USA, makers of Marlboro ci...
Republic XP-72 "Superbolt": The P-47's Thunderbolt's Little Known Crescendo
1 Apr 2022, 22:37 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Fighter planes are a bit like Pokemon. Before you pelt us with vegetables, allow us to explain. Fighter aircraft hone their abilities, then their engineers fine tune and modify these skills over time. Then, they evolve into something new entirely. ...
Lockheed NF-104: The Rocket-Boosted Interceptor That Scared Chuck Yeager Half to Death
1 Apr 2022, 17:55 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Believe it or not, modern jet fighters are overall slower than the airplanes from the 60s and 70s that they're designed to replace. Much of this has to do with changes in military doctrine over time. But 60 years ago, U.S. Air Force personnel ...
War Thunder A-10 Warthog Pilot Turns the Fearsome Maus Tank To Sausage Meat With Ease
31 Mar 2022, 04:53 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / It's safe to say War Thunder fans lost their collective minds when they learned that the Fairchild-Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II was making its way to the game. More people pre-ordered the early bird special for the iconic American jet than jus...
Will Rural Americans Ever Accept the EV Revolution? (Or is it Another City Slicker Fad?)
31 Mar 2022, 03:31 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / There's so much to be excited about when it comes to Rivian and their current lineup of electric vehicles hitting showrooms across America right about now. There's a sense with an EV of Rivian's quality, especially their R1T pickup, ...
You Can Forget About Mega Yachts, We Want This MC-130J Commando II on Water Skis
31 Mar 2022, 00:22 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / We love flying boats around here, and we've showcased a fair amount of them here before. Be it civilian private puddle jumpers like the Republic Seabee, a huge Forrest fire killer in the Martin JRM Mars, and so much more. We've seen j...
4th Gen Chevy Caprice: The Triumphant Last Hurrah of American Land Ship Sedans
30 Mar 2022, 22:51 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / With the possible exception of the Ford Crown Victoria, the end of the affordable American luxury sedan came in 1996 with this car. A General Motors product beloved in the 1990s just as it's sought after and desirable today. This is the fourth...
Ford Explorer Sport Trac, the Long Forgotten Mid-Size Pickup with SUV Genetics
30 Mar 2022, 16:51 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / If you could, believe it or not, there used to be a time when Americans weren't all that gung-ho about small to mid-size Ford pickup trucks. Or, at least that was the perception Ford had of them. If you had to point to a singular reason wh...
The MG ZS Electric SUV is a Sales Bonanza in Europe, Americans Should Be Jealous
27 Mar 2022, 20:38 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Americans like to fancy themselves the drivers of the best crossover SUVs around. Be it Acuras, Lexus's, or whatever the case, there's at least some merit behind this claim. But even the Yanks don't get every cool SUV around. Sometim...
Car Wizard Well on His Way to Restoring Ferrari 308 GTB to Better Than Original Shape
27 Mar 2022, 18:50 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Be warned, the Omega Auto Clinic run by Dave, The Car Wizard on YouTube is not a restoration. If you call Dave's office assistant and ask him to restore your 19XX something or other and you only have $400 in the bank, you're probably gett...
Will This 1952 Polikarpov PO-2 Do Any Better Under Capitalism?
27 Mar 2022, 18:18 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / If you know about the Polikaprov PO-2 biplane, it's probably because it was one of the few airplanes in the War Thunder video game to ever be so useless, the game devs had to remove it from the Soviet tech tree for being too bad. But outside o...
2002 Mitsubishi Galant ES: The Official Car of Cup Noodles and Student Loan Debt
27 Mar 2022, 17:02 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / The price of absolutely everything is going up these days. Be it food, gasoline. You name it. But despite what people might tell you, one of your big monthly expenses doesn't have to be your car. Despite what you think, Cash For Clunkers didn&...
Man Buys 12th of 30 Tesla Model Ys From Berlin Gigafactory, Crashes Two Days Later
27 Mar 2022, 09:28 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / The Tesla Gigafactory in Berlin was meant to be a symbol of the brand's ever-expanding influence in the global EV space. At least as far as the completion of the facility itself, that's been more or less a success. But as for the first se...
Zero Motorcycles: Making Harleys and Hondas Look Like Dinosaurs Since 2006
27 Mar 2022, 08:12 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / So far during our EV month, we've showcased EVs of all shapes and sizes on four wheels, train tracks, water-based, and even electric airplanes. But of all the form factors possible to shove an electric motor into, perhaps none is better suited...
LIRR M9: The Newest Electric Rail Car in America's Busiest Commuter Train Fleet
27 Mar 2022, 05:19 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / New York State is the kind of place that has a surprisingly bad reputation for its collossal fleet of electric rail transportation. This includes the New York City Subway, the Long Island Railroad, the Metro-North, and throw in New Jersey transit f...
Illegal Model S Stunt Jump Viral Video Reveals a Worrying Brand Image Problem for Tesla
27 Mar 2022, 02:53 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / There are plenty of valid criticisms of Tesla as a carmaker, a brand, or a cultural institution. Most of the time, these criticisms are levied at the company itself. Or just as prevalently, the founder and CEO of the whole operation. But this t...
Airbus E-Fan X: The Bold Hybrid-Electric Airliner That Fizzled Into Vaporware
26 Mar 2022, 23:12 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / As we've said here before, electric aircraft are a completely different ballgame compared to electric cars, at least as far as engineering is concerned. Because weight is the sworn enemy of battery EVs, electric airplane designs that manage to...
Electric Muscle Cars: Blasphemous, or an Inevitability?
25 Mar 2022, 19:33 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / A few things in this world are pretty much inevitable in 2022. Taxes, Thanos, climate change, mediocre reboot movies, memes, and we'll add electric cars being held in higher esteem than internal combustion. Lots of people in the car enthusi...
81 Years Ago, the Tuskegee Airmen Obliterated Color Barriers and the Luftwaffe
25 Mar 2022, 03:07 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Give or take a couple of days, 81 years ago, a group of African American pilots formed an Army Air Corps squadron that destroyed quite a bit more than the German Luftwaffe's morale. A group that shattered color barriers and showcased to th...
Kalashnikov UV-4: An All-Electric Taxi Designed by a Russian Military Tech Company
25 Mar 2022, 01:23 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / If you thought the idea of Kalashnikov building an electric car was bonkers, would them building a fully electric quadricycle taxi be less or more so insane? Well, if the level of lunacy is inversely proportionate to how small the vehicles are, the...