Trucks aren’t usually built for speed, but in the right hands they can become faster than any commercially-available supercar, and there’s no better proof than the legendary Shockwave, the fastest truck ever built

Originally built by the legendary Les Shockley in 1984, Shockwave was modified by Darnell Racing Enterprises and is still the Guinness record holder for ‘the world’s fastest jet truck’. The heavily-modified Peterbilt Semi had literally nothing under the hood, but that’s because a jet truck doesn’t need a diesel engine. Instead, this powerplant on wheels featured three Pratt & Whitney J58s jet engines at the back, which could develop a total of 36000 bhp to propel Shockwave forward at, well, shocking speeds. It could cover a quarter mile in 6.5 seconds, while a supercar like the Lamborghini Aventador does it in “only” 10.4 seconds.

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The BelAZ-75710 is a Belarussian ultra-class truck that has held the title of the world’s largest haul truck for the last 10 years.

Launched in 2013, the BelAZ-75710 managed to put the BelAZ brand back on the map. Back in the Soviet era, the company based in the Belarusian city of Zhodino made the largest and most powerful mining trucks in the world, but after the fall of the Soviet Union, it was surpassed by Western manufacturers like Caterpillar, Liebherr or Bucyrus, all of which have held the title of ‘world’s largest truck’ with some of their models at some point in time. But, a decade ago, BelAZ reclaimed its throne with a behemoth that puts all other ultra-class trucks to shame in terms of size and load capacity.

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A Swedish electric vehicle manufacturer hopes to become the IKEA of small EVs by shipping its cars as individual parts that can be assembled at their final destination.

Luvly, a Swedish start-up specializing in small and affordable electric vehicles, has announced plans to ship its tiny cars as flat packs to be assembled at their final destination. The company claims that this unusual model will allow it to fit 20 of its cars into a container that would otherwise only have room for 4 assembled vehicles, thus lowering transportation costs considerably. However, the Swedish manufacturer clarified that, unlike IKEA furniture, its electric vehicles are not meant for home assembly. Instead, the flat packs will end up at micro-factories where they will be quickly put together by specialized staff to ensure complete safety.

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A Vietnamese architecture student and diehard fan of The Dark Knight spent six months building his very own Batpod with the help of a team of friends.

Born in 1998, Nguyen Dac Chung was just a child when Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight hit cinemas, but the movie made such a big impact on him that he grew up dreaming of one day driving his own Batmobile and Batpod on the streets of his native Hanoi. He fulfilled half of that dream in 2020, when he built a functional replica of the Tumbler, Batman’s impressive Batmobile from the Dark Knight series, and earlier this month he completed his goal by unveiling a cool DIY Batpod as well.

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The Beast is a legendary 1970s muscle car powered by a Rolls-Royce Merlin V12 airplane engine that can produce over 750hp and has a fuel consumption of around 2.35 mpg.

The story of The Beast goes back to 1966, when English engineer Paul Jameson decided to find out what would happen if someone put a tank engine in a street-legal custom car. Jameson created a custom rolling chassis for the car and fitted it with a Rolls-Royce Meteor tank engine, before turning to transmission expert John Dodd to commission an automated transmission for the unique car. Dodd became intrigued by Jameson’s wacky idea, so when its original creator put the project on hiatus for a while, he ended up buying it from him and completing it himself. It was a labor of love, one that eventually became known as one of the most impressive automotive projects in English history.

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THOR 24 is a unique big rig often referred to as “the most powerful big rig ever built” because of its horsepower rating (3,974 horsepower) reached through a 24-cylinder engine with 12 superchargers.

Can you imagine the god of thunder in truck form? Me neither, but builder Mike Harrah definitely could and the result is nothing short of insane. The 44-foot-long big rig is powered by two 852 cubic-inch V12 diesel engines and 12 superchargers and requires four drag parachutes to deploy out of the rear bumper to stop when it reaches its peak speed of 130 mph (209 km/h). It apparently took Harrah seven years and thousands of hours to build and cost over $7 million.

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The JCB Fastrac Two is a stripped-down and performance-enhanced JCB Fastrac tractor capable of reaching speeds of up to 247 km per hour (153.8 mph).

If you’ve ever driven behind a tractor, you probably already know that they are many things, but they certainly aren’t fast. Tractors are built for power, not speed, but what if someone wanted to make a tractor go really fast? Well, a few years ago, a team at English tractor manufacturer JCB set out to do just that and managed to set a new Guinness record for the world’s fastest tractor with a modified version of the company’s Fastrac tractor. Over two two-kilometer runs, it averaged a speed of 135 mph (217.6 km/h) and a peak speed of 153.771 mph (247 km/h).

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A 35-year-old man from India’s Tamil Nadu state recently set a new world record for the longest distance driven in reverse in under 30 minutes – 16 kilometers and 140 meters.

During an event that took place last week at Edappadi Bypass in Tamil Nadu, Chandramouli, a passionate motorist from Salem district, managed to set a new world record by driving over 16 kilometers in reverse gear in under 30 minutes. The man, whose passion for driving cars goes back to when he was only 10 years old, practiced hard for the task, knowing that he had to beat the previous record set by 22-year-old Tesson Thomas from Pathanamthitta of Kerala, who had covered 14.2 km driving in reverse for 30 minutes. Chandramouli managed to blow that record out of the water, backing up for 16 kilometers and 140 meters in just 29 minutes and 10 seconds.

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At only $2,600, the Robeta electric fire truck may just be the world’s most affordable fire truck. Not to mention you can buy it on Alibaba!

Fully decked-out fire trucks usually cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, but municipalities, businesses, or even individuals looking to protect themselves against fire on the cheap now have a truly affordable and environment-friendly option. The Robeta fire truck is a one-seat full-electric vehicle with a range of 31-37 miles (50 – 60 kilometers) and a decent fire-fighting arsenal. It’s certainly not the most impressive fire truck ever made, but for $2,600, you have to keep your expectations in check.

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A 24-year-old man from Chengdu, China has to pay at least $150,000 in repair costs after trampling and vandalizing four luxury vehicles in a hotel parking lot while drunk.

The incident occurred on the evening of May 21, when a clearly inebriated man was filmed kicking and trampling on a number of luxury vehicles despite his girlfriend’s best efforts to stop him. It’s unclear what prompted this sort of reaction from the perpetrator, referred to only as Gao by Chinese media, but considering that he looks very drunk, a logical explanation may not even exist. The damaged cars include a Lamborghini and two Rolls Royces, and the repair costs have been estimated at over 1 million yuan ($150,000).

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Robbie Balenger, a vegan ultra-runner known for competing in unique races, recently went up against a Tesla Model 3 electric car in what was described as a modern take on the man-vs-horse concept.

Every year, hundreds of people show up in Llanwrtyd Wells, Wales to compete against real horses in the traditional Man vs. Horse Marathon, a 22-mile-long endurance race where speed matters little. Everyone knows horses are faster, but over long distances, humans actually have a shot, and we’ve actually won the race at least a couple of times in the last four and a half decades. It was the concept of Man vs. Horse that recently inspired famous ultra-marathon runner Robbie Balenger to compete against a Tesla Model 3 electric car in a man-vs-machine-type race.

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As the name suggests, the Hummer H1 X3 is three times the size of a standard Hummer H1, making it the largest Hummer in the world, by far.

The Hummer H1 is one of the largest street-legal SUVs ever made, but it literally looks like a toy car next to the behemoth that is the Hummer H1 X3. Measuring 6.6 meters high, 14 meters long, and 6 meters wide (21.6 x 46 x 19.6 feet), this metal monster is the largest Hummer in existence, at least according to its owner, Sheikh Hamad bin Hamdan Al Nahyan, aka the Rainbow Sheikh, one of the most eccentric car owners in the world.

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Japan recently unveiled the world’s first Dual-Mode Vehicle (DMV), a contraption that runs both on roads, like a bus, and on rails, like a train.

The unique bus-train hybrid was unveiled last month, in the town of Kaiyo, Japan’s Tokushima Prefecture. The mini-bus-like contraption didn’t win anyone over with its looks, but it definitely made an impression in terms of practicality. It runs with normal rubber tires on the road, but when it needs to switch to train mode, a pair of metal wheels drop down from the vehicle’s underbelly. The front tires are lifted off of the track, while the rear wheels stay down to propel the vehicle. Switching between road and train modes takes only about 15 seconds.

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Woodmere Avenue in Watford, UK, has become world-famous for an “evil” width restriction made up of six steel bollards after videos of cars crashing into it started going viral online.

On the 24th of March 1980, local authorities in Watford decided to combat rat-running through the city’s residential area by installing what would eventually become the most hated width restriction in the United Kingdom. Made up of six beefy steel bollards, this “abomination” limits the width of vehicles that can pass through it at 7 feet (2.1 meters), which, for a lot of motorists has proven too narrow, despite their vehicles being nowhere near 7-feet-wide. Despite countless complaints from local residents fed up with the mayhem of cars getting stopped in their tracks by the bollards, and motorists afraid they’ll suffer the same fate if they pass through, the width restriction has endured and recently achieved worldwide notoriety.

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Pink hardly seems like an appropriate color for combat military vehicles, but there was a time when the British military had a fleet of pink Land Rovers that affectionately became known as the “Pink Panthers”.

Khaki and beige are the two most common colors used on military vehicles, but when it comes to desert camouflage, there was a time when pink was the best choice. ‘Desert pink’ as it was once referred to, was first used in the Africa campaign of World War 2, but British researchers later confirmed that it was the most suitable camouflage color for the desert, so a fleet of pink Series 2A Land Rover jeeps was also part of the British SAS from 1968 until 1984. They were known as the Pink Panthers, or Pinkies.

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