Bizarre Cars and a Desert Ghost Town: Sounds Like a MotorTrend Holiday Special!

No matter how you celebrate this holiday season, the MotorTrend App is committed to bringing you high-quality entertainment! How, you ask? We’re dragging you out to Roadkill’s favorite desert location (because nothing’s as festive as dust, triple-digit temps, and apocalyptic concrete ghost towns) as we subject some of your favorite MotorTrend hosts to challenges of speed, skill, and self-preservation. We’re opening up the MotorTrend storage yard and grabbing a choice fleet of vehicles that have starred in various shows, none of them being prepared in any way for the challenges. It all goes down on everyone’s favorite shopping day—Black Friday!—November 27, 2020. Welcome to the Holiday Hooptie Challenge!

Related: Get MotorTrend’s biggest deal of the year: Stream 3,600+ hours of automotive shows—including the Holiday Hooptie Challenge—1 year of MotorTrend and HOT ROD digital magazines, and a 25% off coupon for official merchandise! Get the Holiday Hooptie Bundle now!

Who’s Crazy Enough to Participate

Two familiar faces are masterminding the MotorTrend App’s holiday special: David Freiburger and Brian Lohnes. The former, of course, seemingly hosts all the shows—including Roadkill, Roadkill Garage, Engine Masters, and more!—and doesn’t seem to like nice paint, while the latter is the voice of NHRA drag racing and hosts $3K Hooptie Challenge and commentated on Drag Week with Freiburger. Now let’s meet the Holiday Hooptie Challenge contestants:

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  • Faye Hadley: Owner of Pistons & Pixiedust, an ASE-certified general repair shop that specializes in Toyotas and co-host of All Girls Garage. Check her out on YouTube and Instagram. Ask her about her chickens.
  • Steve Dulcich: Engine-building, fabricating, toolmaking, bodywork and painting, farming, hosting two shows, and regular appearances on many others—Dulcich can and does it all, and with a style only he can pull off.
  • Tony Angelo: This former pro drifter turned co-host of HOT ROD Garage has a well-earned reputation. Tony breaks everything. What will he break this time?
  • Lucky Costa: The other half of HOT ROD Garage, Lucky Costa used to wrench behind the scenes on Overhaulin’ and is now the fix to Tony’s break.
  • Fred Williams: Co-host and creator of Dirt Every Day and former tech editor for Petersen’s 4-Wheel & Off-Road magazine. If it has an engine and tires, Fred can bolt some springs and knobbies to it and wheel it over just about any terrain imaginable.

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  • Eric Malone: Head honcho over at Team 256—Muscle Shoals, Alabama’s preeminent grudge racing team. He and his crew are the collective soul of Fastest Cars in the Dirty South, and Malone’s “Black Mamba” 1,200-hp ’79 Malibu regularly runs in the 5s.

The MotorTrend App’s Fleet of Hoopties!

The MotorTrend App fleet was thoroughly examined to separate the juggernauts from the junk, then they gave the juggernauts the weekend off for the holiday special. The six competitors each chose one vehicle and our interminable hosts provided two alternates. Here’s the Holiday Hooptie Challenge fleet.

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1986 Toyota Supra: This new addition to the fleet is from Supra fanatic Faye Hadley. It’s bone stock, has the original 7M-GE inline-six engine and five-speed manual transmission, and definitely does not match the aesthetic of the other vehicles.

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Drift This Humvee: Steve Dulcich asked the team from Drift This if he could borrow their 1,000-hp 6.6L Duramax-swapped, rear-drive-only, apocalyptic, tire-obliterating machine—they were happy to oblige.

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“Bonemaro” 1979 Chevy Camaro: Tony Angelo cannot get over the fact that the HOT ROD Garage low-buck 10-second drag car is neither low-buck nor can it run 10 seconds. But he’s going to wring all he can out of the turbocharged 5.3L LS anyway!

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“Caddy Gremi” 1974 AMC Gremlin: Freiburger bought this 500ci Cadillac V-8-swapped Gremlin for the first $3K Hooptie Challenge, and Lucky Costa is confident all that tire-melting torque can lead him to victory in a cloud of smoke.

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“Bubblicious” 1995 Chevy Caprice: The Drift This crew built this donk’d Caprice into a capable drifter, then Freiburger and Finnegan got their hands on it and proceeded to Roadkill it—at the same location as the Holiday Hooptie Challenge, no less! Why would Fred Williams choose this car?

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1973 Chevy LUV Truck: Another totally new sight in the fleet is Eric Malone’s choice—a ’73 Chevy mini-truck? Oh yeah, it has a 421ci, nitrous-injected small-block Chevy, is fully caged and tubbed, and runs under 9 seconds in the quarter. Eric might have brought a gun to a knife fight.

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ALTERNATE – “Off Roaderhome” 1975 Winnebego Brave 21-foot: Fred Williams and Dave Chappelle of Dirt Every Day were kind enough to gut the questionable interior of this old RV. They were even kinder in adding 40-inch tires, a suspension lift, a transfer case, a driven front axle, and—most important—a 700hp Lingenfelter LS7.

BONUS – “Laphonda” 1974 Honda Civic: Mike Finnegan’s 1,500cc inline-four-powered Honda is definitely the worst riding car in the Roadkill fleet, but it didn’t come in last at DirtFish, so it can’t be that bad.

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