I respect the technology....

[electra225]

How do they get cars to do this? Those are not small cars. Looks like a good way to get bad hurt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=348ppk9nEgs

It starts out a little boring, but keep watching. I've never seen anything like this in my life. They make those heavy cars, Cadillacs and Lincolns hop by remote control. Seems like a good way to ruin a perfectly good old Chevy.

[hermitcrab]

Surprised no one has gotten hurt ...especially with people milling all about....

[Firedome]

A monumental waste of time, money, and effort imo, just so idiotic. No real car lover would do that, it's just plain juvenile showing off, an 8 year old mentality. Now I'll tell you how I really feel...

[walyfd]

When bad things happen to good cars... NOBODY but the original butcher is going to want these. They're hardly even parts cars after such abomination...

Bigger waste than bad plastic surgery.

[electra225]

I agree. You can't fix stupid. But.....I sure have respect for the ability to hop a 5000 pound Lincoln ten feet off the ground and drive it off when it lands. You can knock the front end out from under a Lincoln by hitting a pothole. And they slam those big cars to the ground onto 13" wheels. How does that work? They even stand them on end, sometimes not successfully. There is a contraption of some kind they put on the rear of the car to make it hop. They use a trunk full of truck batteries and some hydraulics to do all that. I know a man who bought a hop car to restore. It was a '65 Impala SS. It was so tweaked, he had to part it out. Nothing on the car was straight. The frame was bent and the body was bowed in the middle longitudinally of the car. The first part of that video shows the contraption they use coming up thru the bottom of the car and knocking the back glass out.....

[walyfd]

The technology is one thing but, in order to do this, you need to destroy a SOLID car which, to have survived solidly was probably a well taken care of example. So essentially that's one less original car for what? None of this can be undone. Not like upgrading to halogen headlights or putting a quartz movement in a Borg dash clock...

[Firedome]

Maybe sort of impressive performance-wise, in their perverted way, but a waste nonetheless. It's just hydraulics and body/frame strengthening, they're not exactly using finite element analysis and micro-strain gauges. Perhaps "backyard engineering" is a better description? I'd imagine it's all pretty cookie-cutter stuff these days, it's been around for at least 30 years.

[hermitcrab]

I like how they ohhhh and ahhhhh when the front suspension self EOL's stuff was never meant for that kind of abuse... what do they expect ?

[19&41]

A demolition derby on 4 wheels.

[electra225]

If we look at this from the devil's advocate prospective.....

Except for the 1960's Chevys, the cars they use are all just used cars, with little to no collector appeal. When was the last time you saw a frame-off restoration on a late '80's Cutlass Supreme or a Buick Regal? Or a Cadillac Fleetwood built on a Chevy Caprice chassis with a 307 "Y" motor in it? Or one of those old hideous Lincoln Town cars? They are messing up cars nobody else wants. Ones they can buy cheap. There was a video of some guy who had put $79,000 in a Cutlass, only to flop it onto its top the first time he tried to stand it on the rear bumper. The paint and chrome work on these cars is above reproach. I don't understand the demolition derby mentality at these "meets". The audience seems to enjoy it when something gets torn all to "deleted". Even the guys whose cars get damaged don't seem to get too excited. I saw a video where a car hopped onto another one, totaling them both. The owners of the two cars involved bumped knuckles and acted like the best of friends. The batteries and relays commonly get on fire and burn up the car. I saw a '64 Impala SS burn up due to an electrical fire that started in the trunk. All the lifting and "hopping" is done wth that contraption they put on the rear end of the car, best I can understand. How do they get the driveshaft to be happy running at that angle? You notice they don't drive the car with the rear end all jacked up. They call them lowriders, but they are all jacked up on hydraulics. I don't understand the thinking, don't enjoy seeing a car put thru such silliness and would never participate in such activities if I were at gunpoint. But, I respect almost anything that people put some of themselves and their ingenuity into, even though I might not attempt such an activity myself. I'm the last to know anything, so I was not aware that such a thing as this existed. My wife says I'm easily entertained.....

[TC Chris]

I don't understand the thinking, don't enjoy seeing a car put thru such silliness and would never participate in such activities if I were at gunpoint. But, I respect almost anything that people put some of themselves and their ingenuity into, even though I might not attempt such an activity myself. I'm the last to know anything, so I was not aware that such a thing as this existed. My wife says I'm easily entertained.....

I'm quoting just the last part because it's so genuinely generous. We keep reading about how our nation has become tribal and polarized. We all need to adopt a bit of Greg's openness. I'll quote again: "I respect almost anything that people put some of themselves and their ingenuity into, even though I might not attempt such an activity myself." Bravo! Wouldn't the world be a boring place if everybody were just like me? And isn't life more interesting when we bump into people with interests that we know nothing about?

Chris Campbell