On this episode of Roadkill
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MotorTranscript
00:00 On this episode of Roadkill, we're sucking smoke down under!
00:04 [Tires screeching]
00:23 [Tires screeching]
00:30 [Music]
00:42 We really had no plan here other than to get on a plane in Los Angeles and fly halfway around the world to Brisbane, Australia.
00:49 We had to get off the plane and meet this guy named Gup.
00:53 And all we really know about him is that he runs the Power Cruise here in Australia,
00:57 which is a series of these wild events with burnouts and superchargers and tire smoke and just the whole program.
01:04 We had an eight-hour layover in Brisbane, and then we've got to get back on a plane and go all the way to the west coast to Perth.
01:11 So while we're here, Gup is going to show us around and just give us a little bit of the flavor of what the Power Cruise is all about.
01:17 [Music]
01:21 Does the toilet really flush the other direction?
01:23 It does. I've actually got video of it because I'm a plumber, originally.
01:27 That's really the only reason I came here, was just to check the toilet out and then I'm out of here.
01:31 Which way does it go over there?
01:33 I don't know, but I've heard it's wrong.
01:35 So I'm going to flush it, get on the plane, and I'm out.
01:38 I just want to kick a kangaroo, watch the toilet, drink some beer, and I'm out of here.
01:42 Be careful when you kick the kangaroo, though. They hurt. No, they'll kick you back.
01:45 It's like America, but inside out.
01:47 After 18 hours on the plane, Finnegan is just useless.
01:51 He pretty much turns into a pumpkin at midnight.
01:53 So he's a vegetable, but we thought it would be a good idea to go drinking.
01:58 Last time I was in Australia, I complained that there just wasn't good beer, so Gup was out to prove me wrong, and also I got to cook a fish on a rock.
02:06 1.45, and Mike's hit the wall already. It's only midday.
02:10 What did you say? I'm good. Let's race.
02:15 You keep telling yourself that.
02:17 It says drink driving. It's a crime.
02:20 It's drunk driving, that's stupid.
02:22 I got this.
02:24 Oh, you're on the bank for two minutes.
02:33 Wow, our host is filling a cheap suitcase full of money at a bank.
02:39 We're going to jail.
02:42 We're still catatonic off the airplane for 13 hours, but we're about to see our first motorsports action in Australia.
02:49 We're at Queensland Raceways.
02:51 In Brisbane, and there's like five or six different hot rods here.
02:55 They're like mid-70s Monaros with twin turbo LS motors in them, and it's weird.
03:00 These guys like having the 1200 horsepower, but they don't really care about going fast. They care about tire smoke.
03:06 They're going to cruise around the road course. When they hit the last turn, they'll be side by side, racing while doing a burnout.
03:13 No lawyers, no insurance companies.
03:15 No roll cage, no helmet, no shoes. These are our people.
03:19 I'm not worried about it. This should be awesome.
03:22 [engines revving]
03:38 There was this one car that we heard was going to be the quickest car there, and we showed up and saw it, and it's tan.
03:44 It looks like a Camry to me, although I guess it was a GM product.
03:48 It's got this turbo LS on it, and it gets out on the track and just freight trains this twin turbo Lamborghini,
03:54 giving credence once again to my statement, not $400,000 worth of fast.
04:00 I just figured out why Australia's awesome. I don't think they have insurance or lawyers here.
04:05 They have 1200 horsepower cars with four people in them with no helmets,
04:09 with the express intent of doing burnouts side by side for a quarter mile.
04:13 There's no fail in this program.
04:15 Then Gup brought out the big guns, which is his 74HQ, which is legendary in Australia.
04:21 It's this bright green thing he gives rides to everybody at his power cruise events.
04:25 It has a 540 in it with a 106mm turbo called Elvis, and this thing makes 1200 horsepower to the wheels,
04:33 and it's not really about going fast. It is about blazing tires.
04:37 [engine revving]
04:55 We've been awake 40 hours now, and we have to go back to the airport
04:59 and catch another flight for four or five hours all the way to the other side of the country.
05:04 So do the math, and that means we've spent two nights on a plane, no hotel room, no shower.
05:10 Yeah, Australia style.
05:12 [engine revving]
05:15 Yesterday was a 36-hour travel day where we flew from LA and then stopped in Brisbane and--
05:20 Ate a koala.
05:21 Ate a koala, drove around and raced at Queensland Raceways.
05:25 And this morning we're in Perth? No, we're in--what's the trash can say?
05:29 Jundalup. This is the land of cities with too many vowels.
05:34 We're about to head off to Gup's event called the Power Cruise,
05:37 which apparently is just the burnout fest like we've never ever seen before.
05:41 And we're going to drive that.
05:43 It looks sort of European. Kind of looks like an Audi, but it's a 2006 Holden HQS.
05:49 It's an HSV.
05:51 HSV?
05:52 Yeah. We basically have no idea what it is.
05:54 It's a red car with black wheels and 1200 horsepower.
05:57 I don't know what it's called, but I know it does this really good.
06:00 Finally, the real reason that we came.
06:03 Gup has got this car that is a Holden HSV Club Sport R8,
06:08 which is a fancy way of saying Pontiac G8 in American.
06:12 But the thing is it is loaded with this Sonny Leonard 727 cubic inch Hemi.
06:17 It's an all-aluminum motor, makes 1,275 horsepower on 91 octane gas.
06:22 Check out this throttle body. 3,600 CFM.
06:25 The engine at Sonny Leonard with all these options is like 65 grand.
06:29 The car before you even start hacking it up is 70 grand.
06:34 And I can't imagine that the guys at High Torque Performance who assembled the whole thing
06:38 didn't ring up like another 100k on this deal.
06:41 I can't believe he's actually giving us the keys to this thing.
06:44 Ah, this is weird.
06:46 Wrong side? You're taking the bullet.
06:48 This is weird.
06:49 I'm buckling up for sure. This isn't safe at all.
06:52 When was the last time you drove on the wrong side of the road?
06:55 Never in my entire life.
06:57 Never been to England, never been to Australia.
06:59 And not with 1,200 horsepower either.
07:01 Is that a button?
07:03 Come on, baby.
07:04 It says check engine oil. I'm just going to ignore that.
07:07 I'm sure they've checked it before they gave us the car.
07:09 Treat it like a rental. It's not yours. Let's go.
07:13 Driving in Australia.
07:15 Don't high center it on the driveway.
07:18 Oh, wow.
07:21 Ah, traffic.
07:23 Oh, my God.
07:24 Get out of the way. We're American.
07:26 Oh, wow. Traffic circle.
07:27 Run for your lives.
07:30 I hope there's no pedestrians here.
07:32 They're screwed if there are.
07:34 Boss. Oh, dude.
07:36 Oh, wow.
07:37 Wait, wait, wait.
07:38 Playing chicken.
07:39 That was bad.
07:42 Hey, you know what? This car has 1,200 horsepower and air conditioning.
07:45 Let's make it work.
07:46 Oh, wow.
07:47 You do it. I'm going to concentrate on the left side of the road.
07:49 Yeah, I suggest you do that.
07:50 Haven't seen any kangaroos yet. Or koalas.
07:59 Maybe that's a myth.
08:00 They're not really around.
08:01 They don't really exist.
08:02 Yeah. Like, that's a myth to lure tourists here.
08:05 And then you get here and you realize there's nothing to see.
08:08 It worked for us.
08:10 Yeah.
08:11 Suckers.
08:17 How do we get off this circle?
08:19 There's a roundabout.
08:20 Yeah, how do we get off this roundabout?
08:22 Unfortunately, we're going to have to change lanes, I think.
08:25 He dismissed it.
08:27 That was it over there.
08:28 Dude, this is going to be our third trip around this thing.
08:31 Don't worry. People aren't staring.
08:34 No.
08:35 Can't get over.
08:37 All right, dude. I don't care. I'm cutting people off.
08:41 I'm getting out of the circle right now.
08:43 I don't know which way we're going. Do you?
08:45 Nah. I'm going this way.
08:48 Oh, I'm turning the light bricks on, too.
08:50 Well, we just took a cruise up by the ocean by two rocks.
09:04 Is that what that was?
09:05 I was avoiding not hitting two cars, dude.
09:08 Neat lagoon. Really, really green, pretty water out there.
09:11 So we made that cruise. I really have no idea what city we're in.
09:14 Just having a little bit of a charging issue.
09:16 You really got to keep the RPM up to keep the batteries charged.
09:19 In fact, there at the light, we came to a stop and the voltage came down and it died.
09:23 So we're thinking we're going to cool it off a little bit here.
09:26 Maybe have a bite to eat and hit the road again.
09:28 It's 154 liters a gallon?
09:33 I don't know what the 154 is, but it's liters.
09:35 Where do you put the card in?
09:36 You don't.
09:37 Nobody steals gas in Australia.
09:39 Apparently.
09:40 Very trusting here.
09:41 And that premium's 98.
09:44 Wow.
09:45 We've gone like what, 80 miles and we're out of gas?
09:47 Yeah, pretty much. And it has a huge tank.
09:49 What did we put in the other day? 30?
09:50 30 gallons.
09:51 Yeah, 30 gallons and we've gone probably 80 miles.
09:55 Something like that.
09:56 But one of the things I figured out is that this being 727 cubic inches,
10:01 basically each four-cylinder bank on this motor is the size of a 350 small block Chevy.
10:07 So it's like having two 350s.
10:09 So if those 350s get 12 miles per gallon, this gets six.
10:14 It all adds up, right?
10:16 Adds up to an expensive ride.
10:19 That's what that adds up to.
10:20 I wasn't standing there very long.
10:22 How did I pump 57 liters in it already?
10:24 How many gallons is that?
10:26 How many gallons are in a liter?
10:28 I'm American. I know nothing.
10:30 Okay, so we've been driving a couple hours now.
10:37 Dirt.
10:38 And we've now approached a dirt road.
10:40 We're lost, dude.
10:41 You think Gup minds if we drive his car on dirt?
10:44 He might mind a little.
10:45 You know what I might know is...
10:47 No kangaroos?
10:48 No koalas, no kangaroos.
10:49 I'm starting to think it really is a conspiracy to get tourists here.
10:53 Okay, well.
10:55 But the good news about all of that is that we are in the middle of nowhere with a nice little paved road.
11:00 Burnouts?
11:01 You thinking what I'm thinking?
11:03 I like burnouts.
11:06 [Engine revving]
11:08 [Laughing]
11:13 It does good burnouts.
11:15 I approve.
11:16 Your favorite gauge is not happy right now.
11:19 See that?
11:21 Yep.
11:23 The engine's hotter than the transmission, I think.
11:26 That's a bad sign.
11:28 This is a brand new car. How could it be overheating?
11:32 [Laughing]
11:34 It has 727 reasons to overheat.
11:36 Yeah, but...
11:37 I know how to fix it, though.
11:39 Ooh.
11:41 Why not? Just because we're in Australia doesn't mean the rules don't apply.
11:44 Wow, there's some unusual bugs on the hood, too.
11:47 Let's go for the shade over there.
11:48 Let's go make some laps and cool it down.
11:51 I think burnouts would cool it down.
11:54 Leaving nothing on the table with the flies here.
11:56 [Engine revving]
12:02 [Tires screeching]
12:04 That was a good one.
12:08 That was a good one.
12:09 [Laughing]
12:10 [Engine revving]
12:13 I feel much better about not seeing qualifiers now.
12:23 [Laughing]
12:24 Check this guy out.
12:25 I think this guy spun out and landed there and walked away from his car.
12:28 Dude, he does look like he's...
12:30 Oh, look, he broke the wheel off!
12:31 The wheel is busted off.
12:32 That's awesome.
12:33 Oh, and he broke the front wheel.
12:35 He broke the center out of the wheel.
12:37 That is cool.
12:38 Whoa.
12:39 We just saw our first road kill.
12:41 It's like a purplish-looking Ford Festiva or something.
12:45 I don't know.
12:46 Looks like he spun out and hit a curb and actually broke the centers out of his wheels.
12:50 And the car's abandoned over here.
12:52 I think it's been sitting here for a long time because you can see weeds growing up around it.
12:55 So we're going to go get a better look.
12:56 What do I stink or something?
12:58 Look at this car.
12:59 This is the image that Gup has in his brain right now.
13:01 Of what we're doing to his car.
13:02 Of what we're doing to his car.
13:03 Yeah, completely.
13:04 I'm taking a spoke with me.
13:05 I got a souvenir.
13:06 Wow.
13:07 This thing's hashed.
13:08 Do you think it was parking brake turn or what?
13:10 You can see the skids where they came right around here.
13:12 I wonder if they thought that they were going to be slick and drifted around and keep going, and they failed.
13:17 Pop the hood.
13:18 Let's see if it has a battery.
13:19 Nope.
13:22 Hey, it's kind of like a motor.
13:24 Only smaller.
13:25 This is like one cylinder's worth of Gup's motor.
13:28 Alright, I'm done with the flies.
13:29 Let's get back in the car.
13:30 Yuck!
13:36 Well, now we can say that we've done hellacious burnouts on two continents.
13:39 It's been a pretty good day, but it's time to wrap it up, try and sleep for the first time on this trip, and hit power cruise in the morning.
13:47 So, we're here at Sumtrak.
13:48 I can't even pronounce looking at cars.
13:50 I don't even recognize, but I know a good turbo blower and nitrous when I see it, and every car here has one.
13:57 What Gup has put together is kind of like the ultimate cruise night with no cops.
14:02 Unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to do that.
14:05 I'm going to have to go to the gas station and get a new one.
14:07 I'm going to have to go to the gas station and get a new one.
14:09 I'm going to have to go to the gas station and get a new one.
14:11 I'm going to have to go to the gas station and get a new one.
14:13 The ultimate cruise night with no cops.
14:16 Unfortunately, guys in other countries flat out have more balls at car shows than Americans do.
14:21 I know it's an outrageous statement.
14:22 A lot of people are going to be really upset with that, but these guys are all about the throttle.
14:27 They're not showing up with their baby dolls that they're leaning up against the car.
14:30 They're not riding their lawn chair all day.
14:33 It is about showing up and smoking tires.
14:35 They bring stacks of tires with them to burn them to the rim.
14:40 Seriously, why don't we do this?
14:43 This is the last day of power cruise and this is the power skidding finals.
14:53 I guess the goal here is to turn your tires to barbecue sauce.
14:56 Keep the car going as straight as you can.
14:58 Don't use the brakes. Don't lift.
15:00 Just make as much smoke as you possibly can.
15:07 Oh my God. Orange smoke.
15:10 No f***ing way.
15:13 How the hell do you make orange smoke?
15:19 Finnegan has been doing most of the driving around with the 727 cubic inches and I wanted to one-up him.
15:25 So Gup hooked me up with Frank Gaffiero who has this truck that has 1500 cubic inches and 2200 horsepower and weighs 8 tons.
15:34 Watch this.
15:36 [Honking]
15:38 It was really weird to be out there in this giant truck like towering above these little cars all circling around us.
16:02 The thing that makes this thing crazy is it only runs about mid-12s in the quarter mile, about 110 miles an hour, but it just lights up the tires so easily.
16:11 But the real fun part of it was taking the giant semi-truck and doing that big donut at the end, making smoke everywhere.
16:31 [Engine revving]
16:33 [Laughing]
16:49 Well dude, you failed us on the kangaroos but left nothing on the table when it comes to burnout action. This thing has been a lot of fun.
16:55 Did you have a good time with it yesterday? You took it out the highway for a drive?
16:58 Yeah, we puttered it around a little bit. It was good. We learned to drive, you know.
17:01 Did you behave yourself?
17:02 Oh, completely babied it.
17:03 Since you didn't do anything yesterday, I was just doing anything to do now is rock, paper, scissors. Who's going to take it in the drag race tonight?
17:15 You're going to let us race the thing?
17:17 I'll let you race it.
17:18 Ready? Rock, paper, scissors.
17:20 Smash! Again! I always win this.
17:24 I quit.
17:25 Get out of the way. I'm racing.
17:26 No, you're not. You're on the wrong side of the car, dude.
17:29 [Laughing]
17:31 Okay.
17:32 Let's just go ahead and say that I intentionally gave up the seat in the drag race because there is no chance he's making it through this drag race.
17:38 He's going to blow the tires off the thing, possibly put it into the wall, and I don't want to be that guy.
17:43 Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Mike Finnegan.
17:45 I'm about to go street racing on a drag strip in a car that I've never hole shotted before on drag radials that I'm not allowed to do a burnout on to warm up.
17:53 This is going to be awesome.
17:55 I roll up to the starting line for race number one, and I think they cherry picked somebody for me because I was at the back of the line,
18:02 and they sent me around to the front of the line and lined me up with some dude.
18:04 I don't know who he was.
18:06 And I just kind of gingerly rolled it off the line, made sure the tires were hooked,
18:11 and then gave it maybe a quarter of a throttle and drove by this guy for an easy win.
18:15 [Engine revving]
18:22 That was a little too easy.
18:24 Okay, so my next race is a white four-door Holden Commodore.
18:28 Looks like something my grandma would take to church.
18:31 But since everything here is supercharged, we're running N2O.
18:35 That's nitrous for you kids at home.
18:37 You never know. This guy could be something stout.
18:39 What do you got in there?
18:40 Not much. Not as much as you got in there.
18:43 Oh, it's all chrome. Don't worry. It doesn't run for shit.
18:45 [Engine revving]
18:54 Okay, that wasn't exactly fair for the other guy.
18:56 I left him like he was chained to the pole behind him.
18:59 He's not doing bad, but I can't deny that it looks like they are putting up ringers in this race.
19:04 And by ringer, I mean the slowest guy they can find to line up with them.
19:08 So I come back around, and I'm feeling pretty cocksure about myself.
19:12 That's a good-looking car right there.
19:14 It would be a damn shame when I send him packing, "This one's for America."
19:19 [Laughs]
19:21 [Engine revving]
19:34 Ah, shit, man.
19:36 [Bleep]
19:37 In the third race, I don't know what happened, but I just floored it off the line.
19:40 The car unhooked. When I realized it's not accelerating, I shift into high gear and give it even more gas, because I'm an idiot.
19:46 All of a sudden, there's a moment where the thing kicks really sideways,
19:50 and he's got to choose between the wall, Australia, jail, and a car owner who's way bigger than him,
19:57 or he gets to just look like a chump.
19:59 And he chose chump, which actually is what I would have done as well.
20:02 And as the much slower and crappier car pulls away from the most expensive Holden ever built,
20:07 all I want to do is choke the hell out of a Koala, because I just lost a race I should have won.
20:12 Sorry, America. We just got our asses kicked.
20:15 I said to him, "You should use first gear. It might give you a bit more of a drive."
20:19 You know, "Try using first gear as well."
20:21 He used first gear. He used too much pedal. Smoked the tires.
20:24 And then he stayed on it while he went to second gear. It looked good, but he lost.
20:27 This is going to sound like an excuse, but the Holden is utterly useless in a drag race.
20:33 It's too much torque, too little tire, too little talent on the part of the driver.
20:38 Now that I've lost and I can't race anymore, they can't exactly kick me out for smoking the tires now, can they?
20:43 Look, there'll be smoke in the air out there.
20:49 It makes good smoke.
20:56 I think the tires are defective.
20:58 Should I do a burnout right next to him with his own car?
21:03 [laughs]
21:05 That was great.
21:08 What did we learn?
21:11 We learned that you struggled awfully hard to cheat me out of the driver's seat so that you could embarrass yourself.
21:16 I'm not embarrassed.
21:17 You see the smoke I made?
21:19 I did.
21:20 Here, there, and up there.
21:22 What I actually saw was the moment that you made the choice not to crash Gup's car.
21:26 You wanted to win really badly, but you just couldn't pile it into the chingadera there.
21:31 Well, he's bigger than me.
21:33 And I'm pretty sure I'm almost positive he owns most of Australia.
21:36 So, yeah, I wasn't getting out of here alive if I wrecked his car.
21:40 So, we like the car, we blame him for the lack of kangaroo, we're done.
21:43 Yeah. Jesus, where's the koalas in this place?
21:46 No koalas, no duckbill platypus, no dingoes, just tire smoke.
21:51 What is the story?
21:58 Did they brought rabbits here and the rabbits ate all the kangaroo and the kangaroo ate all the capybara or something like that?
22:04 I forget exactly how it goes.
22:06 You notice there was no fosters anywhere we went?
22:08 No, they don't drink that stuff.
22:10 No fosters, no Paul Hogan.
22:12 Not one person has said crikey to me.
22:14 Can you guys work on that?
22:16 Actually, you know what the secret is?
22:19 We didn't even film this episode in Australia.
22:21 This is actually like Northern California.
22:23 We're in Palm Springs right now.
22:24 We just drove on the wrong side of the street the whole time.
22:27 Feels like we're in Palm Springs.
22:28 Our budget's that low.
22:29 This is long, you want us to do it all over?
22:31 Why don't we end it with next time on Roadkill we jump a cat with a bus.
22:34 Next time on Roadkill we jump a cat with a bus.
22:38 And the bus only gets this much air.
22:40 Poor kitty.
22:42 See now it's his fault.
22:44 Oh, that was a fly on the tooth, right on the tooth.
22:47 Chew that up and call it protein.
22:50 Your country's kind of buggy.
22:51 The racetracks in Australia are very scenic.
22:54 Still no freaking kangaroos.
22:57 Dude, this is YouTube.
22:58 You're supposed to shut the video off the second the credits roll.
23:01 But if you didn't, here's your bonus.
23:03 Four minutes of insane burnout action.
23:06 [CAR ENGINE]
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