The madness started somewhere in the Sierra Nevada mountains. The 2012 Bullrun Live Rally had just left a lunch pit stop at Pioneer Meadows Golf Course, nestled high in the evergreens of Pioneer, CA, when Highway 88 was hit with an explosion of high-performance combustion that hadn’t been seen in the area since entrepreneur/adventurer Steve Fossett crashed his Bellanca Super Decathlon airplane into these mountains in 2007.
I dropped the pedal and listened to the roar of the Challenger’s naturally aspirated V8 swell, and we lurched forward, overtaking car after car.
Upon leaving the Meadows, the clip of high-end exotic cars and modified street racers soared into the two-lane mountain pass and immediately floored their collective throttles, beginning a lunatic time warp across the asphalt roller coaster of dips and climbs that carve across this most beautiful region of America. And there I was, clutching the thick steering wheel of a 2012 Dodge Challenger SRT8 392 -- yes, the “Big Boy,” as Wiz Khalifa calls it in his “Black and Yellow” video. Only this SRT8 wasn’t black and yellow but rather the signature HEMI orange made famous by these certain Dukes over in Hazzard County.
My photographer Tom and I had spent the last leg of the Bullrun driving utterly alone from San Francisco to Pioneer, somehow losing the entire pack of Bullrun cars, condemning us to six hours of solo cruising through rural townships. Sure the drive was gorgeous and the scenery unforgettable, but neither Tom nor I had signed up for scenic drives. We wanted action, and now we had more than we could handle.
The most salient element to driving the SRT8 is, quite simply, its namesake 392 cubic-inch engine. The transcendent 6.4L V8’s 470 lb-ft of torque is enough to send your neurons into an explosive fit. And its sound… Well, when you hear its full herd of horses (also 470, coincidentally) galloping through the Alcantara-wrapped interior of your Challenger, there’s not another place on Earth you’d rather be. The sound is deep, low and throaty. And although its melodious tones are smile-inducing, the pull of its full power when the throttle is depressed and you’re quick-shifting through its six-speed manual gearbox will have you seeing stars.
So there we were, a Ford Mustang GT500, Porsche PanameraS, BMW X6, Aston Martin DB9, Subaru WRX STI and a drift/rally-tuned Scion FR-S cutting through the switchbacks of Highway 88, all engaged in a sort of vehicular back-country hoedown where dance partners switch positions every time a passing lane opens up. And if a legal passing lane doesn’t? Well, then it comes down to a battle of testicular fortitude as double-solid lane dividers suddenly turn into dotted lines, and basically a honky-tonk jailbreak ensues with a rabid reshuffling of the car(d)s.
With Tom firing away furiously on his Canon, at times perilously leaning out the window, I dropped the pedal and listened to the roar of the Challenger’s naturally aspirated V8 swell, and we lurched forward, overtaking car after car. As we approached the front of the line, there was only a plaid -- yes, plaid -- Ferrari 430 left to overtake. We were set on capturing first place, and the SRT8 was up for the challenge. Gripping the wheel, Tom and I looked at each other and shared one of those silent nods, the type you see in buddy cop flicks, and we mashed the throttle to the floor; Tom squeezed the door handle with white knuckle fervor.
That’s when Godzilla attacked. Team Hudson’s heavily modified GT-R Skyline blitzkrieged past us on the left hand side, crossing double yellows in an emasculating backhand that made it seem as if we were cruising in neutral. He overtook us and the Ferrari with one blistering fell swoop and disappeared into the horizon. As hard as we were whipping the 470 horses in the Challenger, we would never match the brute force of Godzilla (the GT-R would go on to accumulate over $14,000 worth of speeding tickets throughout the course of the rally; it was easy to see why). No matter how fast you’re willing to go, there is always someone willing to go faster. If there is a place for subtext in the Bullrun, this would be it.
And that is the way of the Bullrun, America’s most notorious homegrown rally. While the eight days are spent locked in high-velocity mechanical jousts like the one above, the nights are spent in similar bouts of high-velocity jousting. Except, instead of gallons of high-octane petroleum, gallons of high-octane Don Julio and Belvedere are consumed. Hotels are evacuated. Road blocks erected, netting millions of dollars in exotics. Tabletops are danced upon and hangovers studied like Higgs boson subatomic particles. Mistakes are made. For the $20,000 entry fee, you surely get your money’s worth of bar-stool tales.
“Mate, I was up until 4:30 a.m. last night,” a grinning Brit named Tim told me during one day’s lunch stop overlooking Pismo Beach. Nursing what appeared to be the ne plus ultra of migraines, he continued an anecdote that included a visiting Russian model and a herd of her stiletto-ed friends, an illegal excursion onto the Hyatt Sunset rooftop and enough illicit consumables to settle Colombia’s trade debt.
And that was opening night, before the rally had even started.
“Well, he paid for it,” laughs Matt, his partner, another jovial Brit with an affability akin to Fozzie the Bear. “This is the first time he’s talking all morning. He was proper green in the car -- I almost considered stopping by the ER!”
In the world of automotive pairings, few duos fold together so neatly as the reinvigorated Challenger SRT8 392 and the Bullrun. Both are loud, belching beasts that roll through your town frightening the pedestrians, sending shudders of fear into the hearts of inhabitants and tingles of curiosity through the loins of innocent coeds. They’re both brash symbols of American Muscle declaring their existence while bullying those in their way into submission. There’s a lot to be said for subtlety in the modern world, a place where the entire message is in the subtext of the metaphor. Neither in the Bullrun nor the 392 is there place for subtext or metaphor. Here, you either go fast or get out of the way.
Read more : http://www.askmen.com/cars/car_tips/bullrun-2012-2.html
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