On this episode of Roadkill
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MotorTranscript
00:00 On this episode of Roadkill, we're going to recycle a Toyota Prius.
00:04 With a tank!
00:07 Yeah!
00:08 [laughing]
00:09 [tires screeching]
00:10 [tires screeching]
00:13 [tires screeching]
00:21 [glass shattering]
00:22 [tires screeching]
00:23 [tires screeching]
00:36 [tires screeching]
00:37 The idea behind this episode is to do a shootout of a '75 AMC Gremlin to a new Prius.
00:47 But you know what? Not everything goes as planned on Roadkill.
00:51 I bought the Gremlin for $700 off of eBay, and that was like five or six years ago.
00:56 I really thought that I was going to make a project car out of it, but life changed.
01:00 I ended up shoving it in this garage, and it sat here for three or four years, untouched.
01:05 [engine starting]
01:06 [engine revving]
01:08 It's got spark. It's just very weak. It should run on ether for sure.
01:13 The Toyota Prius is the hybrid greenie car that hot rodders love to hate.
01:18 What I want to do is compare that Prius to my '75 Gremlin.
01:22 See, when the Gremlin came out in 1970, it was sort of the Prius of its time,
01:27 along with the Ford Pinto and the Chevy Vega.
01:30 It was a small economy car, the first time that domestic automakers had really worried about that type of thing.
01:36 But my argument is that as a hot rodder who wants to drive an old car every day,
01:40 this Gremlin makes more sense than the Prius.
01:43 It was $700, so I don't care what the difference in gas mileage is.
01:46 It's going to take forever for you to actually justify the price of the Prius because it gets better mileage.
01:52 And from an environmental point of view, the Gremlin has long since amortized its manufacturing pollution.
01:58 That's gone. Whereas the Prius is truly an environmental disaster when it comes to manufacturing.
02:04 Hence, Gremlin.
02:06 After dragging the Gremlin out of the garage, I spent a couple days working on it.
02:22 I had to change the start rod bushings, threw some spark plugs in it, plug wires, some brakes.
02:26 But that's about it. Gremlin's good to go.
02:29 I don't know if the Prius is good or not. I've never driven one.
02:34 My God, it's a speed bump. It's an egg.
02:37 It's got the old clean air axis.
02:40 That's so you could drive in the carpool lane because you were green to the earth,
02:43 and so they gave you the perk of driving in the carpool lane.
02:46 Oh, so you can drive in the snob lane, essentially, is what you're saying.
02:49 Does it have a motor? Does it have a soul?
02:52 It's amazing how little I actually know about these.
02:56 I think there's an engine here somewhere.
02:58 That's not an engine. That's a barbecue.
03:00 Look at that.
03:01 This is for making your tofu burgers right before you go on your fixed-gear bicycle ride.
03:06 Wow.
03:07 How bad could it suck? Let's drive it.
03:09 What is B?
03:10 Badass.
03:12 R-N-D-B.
03:14 It goes like this. Reverse, neutral, drive.
03:17 Badass. That's for passing people. If you want to pass people, you go badass.
03:21 I think there's no badass in the Prius.
03:23 It turned off. Okay, I'm going to give it some gas.
03:26 It started.
03:27 On the floor.
03:29 Did it start?
03:32 The gremlin might outrun this.
03:34 So you've got to drive it to the gas station.
03:35 No, no, no. It's on you.
03:38 Son of a bitch.
03:43 Come on, car, start.
03:45 Oh, yeah, I've got to push on the gas pedal.
03:50 Yeah, I can hear the engine revving.
03:52 Drive.
03:53 Come on, you stupid car.
03:55 I've got nothing here. I don't know why the car won't move.
03:57 This is why it gets such good mileage. You never go anywhere.
04:02 I can't make the car move.
04:04 Mother-fucking-shit.
04:06 Ah, come on.
04:10 It does not go anywhere, but I can hear the motor revving.
04:13 Did you put your foot on the brake?
04:15 There we go.
04:19 Oh, my God, that's it? That's all it's got?
04:30 Today we're going to do gas mileage test from here to Willow Springs Raceway, which is about an hour away.
04:36 And once we get there, obviously, all mayhem will break loose.
04:39 Whoops.
04:41 This thing is a 232 cubic inch six-cylinder.
04:45 The M1 was different than the Pinto or the Vega in that it had a base inline six instead of a four-cylinder,
04:51 so it probably didn't get as good a mileage.
04:53 If I had to guess on the Grammy, I would say it's going to get 14 miles per gallon.
04:57 But anything in double digits, honestly, is good for me.
05:01 It took $31 to fill it. My truck takes about 90.
05:05 There, it's running out onto the floor. We'll call that full.
05:09 15 gallons, 65 bucks.
05:11 This thing has a bigger tank than I thought.
05:19 I feel less of a man. I feel about four feet tall.
05:23 I feel like I should be riding a bicycle to work and eating a lot of granola right now.
05:28 I feel like growing my hair out, listening to eight-track tapes and smoking weed.
05:33 Yeah, you and your buddies should be heading to an AC/DC concert right now.
05:38 I'm thinking more Kansas.
05:40 Other than the fact that it's got air conditioning and a GPS, there's really nothing great about this car.
05:47 I hope it gets really excellent mileage to make up for all the V8s I have in my life.
05:53 Are you ready for racing?
05:55 Okay, on your three.
05:58 One, two, three.
06:04 Uh-oh, I'm getting pulled pretty bad.
06:06 Oh, you're getting pulled pretty bad right now.
06:07 Oh, this is embarrassing.
06:10 Did you even hit the accelerator pedal?
06:12 The beauty of street racing these cars is you can never get caught because it's not obvious you're racing.
06:18 When we're street racing, we're actually impeding traffic.
06:23 Okay, ready? One, two, three.
06:28 Oh.
06:30 Wow, the Gremlin is weak sauce.
06:33 The Gremlin is prettier.
06:35 I like style in my automobile, and this car is severely lacking in that department.
06:39 The Gremlin, meanwhile, holds the distinction of being the only car designed on an airplane barf bag.
06:46 Can you imagine that board meeting?
06:48 Okay, we got this new car, and we're going to call it a Gremlin.
06:54 Yeah, that's going to sell a sh--load of automobiles.
07:02 1.3 gallons.
07:05 1.3? This looks 2.59.
07:09 So the Gremlin got 18.14 miles per gallon.
07:12 That's deep double digits for me. That's good.
07:15 Okay, so how many gallons in the Prius?
07:17 1.39.
07:20 33.8.
07:22 Wow.
07:23 Aren't they supposed to get 48 miles per gallon?
07:24 Probably not when you're driving like an idiot.
07:27 We can almost guarantee that never before have a Prius and a Gremlin showed up to do a head-to-head shootout at the streets of Willow Racetrack.
07:35 We already proved which car was faster going forwards on the street, but what we really wanted to find out was which car went faster backwards.
07:43 I like that we're about to go backwards as fast as possible when we're about three feet away from each other.
07:48 One, two, three.
07:52 Oh, come on, baby.
07:54 Wow, I'm winning.
07:55 Oh my god, I'm getting whooped by the Gremlin.
07:58 Oh, speed wobble. He's crossing lanes.
08:00 That's Rockford.
08:06 I was going to pull a Rockford, but honestly, I had no idea what was going on.
08:10 The front end of this thing gets real wonky.
08:13 You were swerving. You changed lanes.
08:15 Oh, it was so bad.
08:20 Speaking of that tight front suspension, I think there is some chance that the Gremlin can outrun the Prius here on the road course at the streets of Willow.
08:27 So we're going to do both drivers, both cars, and sit in the timing tower and clock us as we go by, see which car is quicker.
08:33 This is just my warm-up lap, and then I'll come through at speed.
08:38 I've been on this track before, but I can't say I'm familiar with it enough to really know where all the turn-ins and everything are.
08:47 So we'll do the best we can here in the Gremlin.
08:50 Poor Gremlin.
08:55 I'm thinking right now I'm real glad I don't have an oil pressure gauge.
08:58 Oh, that poor white wall. It's dying.
09:06 Come on, Gremlin. Go, Gremlin, go.
09:10 Looking good, doing about 50 maybe.
09:14 Wow, that was a weak starting line entrance, 50 miles an hour.
09:18 That poor Gremlin. Brakes leave something to be desired.
09:25 Yeah, this is not impressive at all. We're 30 seconds into this first lap, he's only to the second turn. That's not good.
09:39 You know, back in the early '70s, guys actually did race Gremlins in competition,
09:44 but they weren't a bone-stock, absolute pile of crap that had been sitting in my garage for five years.
09:50 Oh, understeer so bad. Oh, this thing's a dog.
09:54 A minute and 55. Come on, baby. What do we got here?
09:58 156.9 seconds.
10:01 Oh, and the brake lights came back on. That's good.
10:08 I've never driven a Prius before, and my first time is going to be here on a racetrack.
10:13 It's fitting, because this is a precision-implemented performance.
10:17 That's one hell of a race car.
10:20 Wow, this thing's bad. I suppose it wouldn't be if you got used to it. It's just so foreign.
10:25 Wow, this is bad. But you know what? It's faster than the Gremlin, for sure.
10:36 A lot of tire squealing for a warm-up lap. All right, here we go.
10:39 It doesn't look much faster there.
10:41 Going into the hot lap, again, it was pretty obvious that the Prius was going to be faster than the Gremlin.
10:47 He's into turn three at the 30-second mark, which is one whole turn faster than he was in the Gremlin.
10:54 Halfway into the hot lap with the Prius is the moment that the whole show started to go upside down.
11:00 I don't know if I noticed first that the thing was just slowing down, or if I heard the rattle.
11:05 What's that rattling? You hear that?
11:07 It doesn't sound happy. I don't know if that's the construction equipment in the background, or him.
11:12 Did we run out of batteries? He's going slower.
11:17 Oh my god! It went three seconds slower. I think you broke it.
11:24 It won't rev.
11:26 See, the barbecue's fine.
11:30 That sounds like top end to me.
11:33 Well, I don't know. Could be piston slap, too. It'll be fine.
11:37 Toyotas usually don't break.
11:39 That's true. So, we better go challenge that theory.
11:43 I've blown up a lot of stuff in my day. I've never blown up a Prius before, though.
11:48 But this is Roadkill. We can break anything.
11:50 To really give me the experience of being in a cab, why don't you take one of the long loops and tell me it's the regular track.
11:59 You ready for the cab experience?
12:01 Hey! Move over, you moron!
12:03 Oh wow, this sounds horrible.
12:07 Yeah, I think it'll be fine.
12:09 It's not smoking.
12:12 Is it running? I don't believe so.
12:17 Something says it's off. Check engine lights on.
12:20 Okay, now why isn't the electric motor saving our life right now?
12:25 Ooh, yeah. Dude, we're driving on electrical power. You want to see how far we can go?
12:30 Oh, it fired back up!
12:32 We're going 30. That's wide open.
12:36 Now we're smoking.
12:41 Yeah, let's make sure we're not putting oil all over.
12:43 Oh, dead. Fire?
12:46 It's dead. It's completely dead. It's not even battery.
12:55 Well, I've got to give the Prius credit for surviving 289,010 miles.
13:01 We got it.
13:03 We just put a window on the engine block of the Prius after two laps at Willow Springs Raceway.
13:10 Gremlin wins.
13:12 By the next day, we had a new plan.
13:18 We dragged the Prius all the way home and stuffed it in the driveway to get some work done.
13:22 And we brought along our vicious guard dog.
13:26 Today. Come on. There we go.
13:30 What started off as an innocent test went roadkill on us when a rod came flying out of the Prius.
13:35 But now that this thing has 290,000 miles on it, it's clearly repaid its debt to the environment.
13:41 So we're going to do the right thing.
13:43 We're going to take it to a buddy in Phoenix who's going to help us recycle it.
13:47 To further humiliate the Prius, we're going to use the Gremlin to haul it all the way to Phoenix.
13:52 So we have to figure out how to get a tow hitch here on the Gremlin with the receiver.
13:57 This slides into the receiver.
13:59 This is going to attach to the nose of the Prius.
14:02 So we also have to get the bumper cover off and make some tabs for this.
14:06 Ready?
14:08 Looks better already.
14:11 The back end come up.
14:13 It is kind of heavy.
14:14 It's got the railroad girder in it.
14:17 We'll just weld right to that.
14:20 I wouldn't say the dog is good to bring on road trips unless your definition of good includes watching Fryburger get puked on.
14:28 This is going to go perfect.
14:30 I've always wanted to wrench on a Prius. It's my Prius wrench.
14:34 Okay, we have foam cooler.
14:41 Take that off.
14:42 Wow, aluminum. Not good.
14:46 Why would that not be steel?
14:48 There's no amount of duct tape that will solve this, right?
14:51 No, we're going to have to go bigger than that.
14:54 Mig welding the trailer hitch to the Gremlin, that was easy.
14:59 But it took some engineering to figure out a way to safely bolt the tow bar to the Prius.
15:04 With aluminum bumper structure, double wall, we try to clamp onto this or put a bolt through it like that.
15:12 It's just going to crush it.
15:13 So Fryburger cut up these sleeves to go in there.
15:17 So when we bolt our draw bar adapter on there, good to go.
15:22 Solid.
15:23 And safe.
15:25 We got the tow bar all hooked up and it's super pro.
15:34 Finnegan is figuring out the lights here so that we're semi-legal.
15:37 And we've got our I-HUG sticker on the front so everybody knows we're taking this very seriously.
15:41 And we're about to make our first test drive to find out if this whole contraption is going to fall apart or not.
15:46 Safety chains, trailer light wiring.
15:48 This is as good as it will ever get the next time someone tries to tow a Prius with a Gremlin.
15:54 It's not in neutral.
16:00 That's not going to last long.
16:05 You want to try and put it in neutral?
16:08 We can.
16:09 In the following cases, as the front wheels might be locked by means of the parking lock mechanism,
16:14 your vehicle cannot be towed by another vehicle using a rope.
16:17 We sort of have a rope.
16:18 One of the problems that we've had with the Prius ever since the engine broke down
16:22 is for some reason the parking brake is locked up.
16:25 The best possible solution always involves fire.
16:28 I crawled under the front of the car with a cutting torch and hacked right through the axles right by the CV joints.
16:38 There we go.
16:39 Alright.
16:45 Okay.
16:46 Don't kill us.
16:47 It's rolling.
16:49 It's rolling freely.
16:50 Rolling.
16:51 It's rolling freely.
16:52 It's rolling.
16:53 It's rolling freely.
16:54 It's rolling.
16:55 It's rolling freely.
16:56 It's rolling.
16:57 It's working.
17:03 Yeah.
17:04 Hey.
17:05 It's working.
17:07 Here, let's just go ahead and...
17:09 Let's just go right over the speed bump.
17:11 This guy in the Prius is tailgating me bad.
17:13 What a jerk.
17:14 This feels fine at 20.
17:17 To you.
17:18 I'm saying this works, dude.
17:20 Test stop.
17:21 Okay, so the brakes are good for 7 miles an hour.
17:28 Any more than that, we're sliding into the next town.
17:30 Wow.
17:32 You know, every time we do a road kill, I have a moment where I say to myself,
17:35 "Have we done anything as stupid as this before?"
17:38 So we rolled around the block one time, which seemed like a perfectly good road test.
17:43 400 miles to Phoenix.
17:45 Last night, we made it 136 miles, and as it turns out, the Gremi is quite the tow vehicle.
17:57 But now, we have to climb the Indio Grade.
18:00 I don't know how long it is or how steep it is, but I know it's brutal.
18:03 I know this thing could overheat, and we might be going 15 miles an hour in first gear.
18:06 Over here.
18:07 This is where you pee.
18:08 Come on.
18:10 This way.
18:12 There we go.
18:13 There we go.
18:14 So, I looked it up last night.
18:19 The Prius weighs like 2,900 pounds, which is way less than the Gremi.
18:24 Weighs like 2,900 pounds, which is way lighter than I thought.
18:28 That's how it gets decent mileage.
18:31 And the Gremi advertised at 2,600 pounds, but I figure we're in the Gremi, right?
18:39 So the two cars weigh roughly the same.
18:41 The Prius has a 10-inch longer wheelbase than this.
18:44 Can I get a high five?
18:49 No.
18:52 Are you going to barf on fry burger?
18:54 Yes.
18:55 Is that why you were feeding her that croissant this morning?
18:57 There we go.
18:58 Puke on fry burger.
18:59 Yeah, I know.
19:00 I had a croissant and a banana and some cashews for breakfast.
19:03 Don't lick me.
19:05 Here comes the grade.
19:07 26 miles of grade.
19:14 We're doing 65.
19:19 Passing our first semi. Let's see how long this lasts.
19:22 On the wood. We're already slowing down.
19:27 It just occurred to me, we don't have a temp gauge, so even if this goes wrong, we're not going to know it.
19:32 If ignorance is bliss, roadkill is just amazing bliss.
19:36 We've done a lot of irresponsible things on the road before, and this is probably one of them.
19:44 The flat-towing plan was going perfect. We were actually hauling 75 miles an hour most of the way when we weren't going up a grade.
19:51 And that's when the tire exploded.
19:54 When you turn the cameras off, something happens, and this is what happened.
20:00 We blew that tire, and this thing is so sketched to begin with that as soon as it went, he tried to correct it and spun the thing complete 180 right here.
20:10 Here's how it went down.
20:12 Right here, the tire blew.
20:14 Almost immediately, Finnegan hung a hard left off the road.
20:18 This is an embankment that drops about one full car height.
20:22 And then we went sailing through this 20 yards of creosote bush.
20:26 Right here is about the point where the Prius started coming around sideways.
20:30 We pulled a full-on 180 and ended up right here.
20:34 Looks to me like we got some sticks through the radiator.
20:37 Oh, it's even worse than that.
20:39 We put a radiator into the fan, destroyed the fan, destroyed the radiator.
20:43 But we lived, and that's all that's really important right now.
20:45 We need to go buy a lot of lottery tickets right now, man.
20:48 We sat around for 10 hours in 110-degree heat waiting for the tow truck driver because they didn't want to come.
20:55 They thought this was an off-road rescue.
20:57 But finally, we loaded up both of the cars and headed to Phoenix because tomorrow is going to be a much better day.
21:06 [TRACKING]
21:10 We knew Gene and Ken Neal from BulletproofDiesel.com, and they own this 1965-ish British Chieftain tank.
21:21 It's 56 tons, and the Prius is going to be no match for that tread right there.
21:28 The first thing they have to do here is warm up the 6-cylinder, 12-piston, 2-stroke diesel.
21:34 And once that's going, Finnegan and I are going to learn how to actually drive the tank.
21:38 It doesn't get any more destructive than a freaking tank.
21:43 Those are called bazooka plates. I've never driven anything that had a component known as a bazooka anything.
21:48 What are these?
21:51 Those are smoke grenade dischargers for stunning the enemy.
21:55 They're designed to create a smoke screen, so they'll actually fire out like a shotgun, so to speak, several smoke grenades at once.
22:01 Let's drive this thing.
22:02 I assume this is designed for sandals, right?
22:05 Gene and Ken are actually going to let us drive their tank.
22:10 This might as well be the last episode of Roadkill ever, because how do you top this?
22:17 Oh my god. Driving a tank.
22:22 Oh, smoke screen.
22:28 Driving it is pretty easy. You have an accelerator pedal, a brake pedal, and you steer by pulling on a pair of levers.
22:34 You can either lie down and look through the periscope, or open the hatch and look through the hole the way we did.
22:39 Either way, you're protected by an 8-inch thick steel bulkhead that no Prius is getting through.
22:45 The shifter is just like a motorcycle. It's got a 6-speed gearbox, and you shift it by clicking up or down with your left foot.
22:51 Second gear.
22:57 And he bank shifts third.
22:58 Wow, we're hauling.
23:07 So naturally, Finnegan gets in the tank, and the first thing he needs to find out is how fast it's going to go.
23:14 The guy said that they had never driven it as fast as he did.
23:17 The best part about that is, I think I went into a place I wasn't supposed to go, but who the hell is going to stop me? I'm in a tank.
23:26 The bad news is that one of the rubber road wheels that holds the track in place actually came apart a little bit.
23:33 But because of that, I'm going to get to smash the Prius.
23:36 It's the craziest feeling on earth, because it's not fast, but you're driving it going. Nothing is stopping this tank.
23:44 You feel godlike, dude. This is crazy. This is absolutely crazy.
23:53 Camera rolling. This guy's on. This is Prius smash.
23:57 Camera's are set.
23:58 Tank is go.
24:00 Hey, David.
24:02 Go for 500.
24:04 Before we do this, I want you to know two things.
24:06 First, I'm insanely jealous of where you're sitting right now.
24:10 And second, I don't like the way that Prius is smiling at me.
24:14 Run that bitch over.
24:15 Go for kill.
24:16 Holy shit, here we go.
24:18 [Music]
24:26 Second gear.
24:27 I feel like I should be ready to duck.
24:30 Holy crap.
24:34 Here we go.
24:37 Oh! Oh my god!
24:40 Glass flew everywhere.
24:42 Whoa!
24:43 That was awesome.
24:44 Yeah!
24:46 You know, when it comes down to it, we're actually glad that other people drive Priuses.
24:56 It just saves more gasoline for us.
24:58 But that doesn't mean that we didn't want to do our part for the environment and smash that sucker.
25:04 [Music]
25:27 Oh yeah!
25:31 I dominated that Prius with the Chieftain, but I know what the keyboard commandos are going to say.
25:36 That we faked it because this appears like a complete Prius.
25:39 And I have to admit, it is still semi-functional.
25:42 And we can't have that, so now we're going to have Finnegan polish it off.
25:46 Yeah!
25:52 [Music]
26:05 Oh, and the Gremlin? We're still driving it every day.
26:08 [Tires screeching]
26:09 [Engine revving]
26:16 [Tires screeching]
26:24 [Music]
26:52 (thud)