Close your mouth: Finland powerslides across Pikes Peak
By Straight-Six, published on 29 June 2010
We’re tired from the long hours of our daytime jobs. Exhausted from the endless amount of online drivel that we and you continue to spew in utterly unabated fashion. Oh, and we’ve also been focusing far too much on those hunks of metal and their nylon straps that dangle from our wrists, however damned impressive they look!
So it’s time, boys and girls, to share with you one of the greatest pieces of driving on one of the most surreal and fucking dangerous roads (if you can call it a road) we’ve come across.
It shouldn’t surprise you that a Finn was at the helm of this Peugeot 405 T16. A gentleman by the name of Ari Vatanen who was renowned for his drifting abilities and elephantiasus of the testicles. Seriously. Oh, and he later went on to become a member of the European Parliament, cause that’s how he rolls. And the road he’s attacking so boldly and furiously? It’s the almost 20-km whopper that climbs almost 1,500 metres on its way to the summit of Pikes Peak in Colorado. Did we mention the road is paved at first before turning to into gravel?!
Sure, we know the overall fastest time on the mountain was achieved by Nobuhiro Tajima in his insane Suzuki XL7 Hill Climb Special. But who cares? Ari is doing it the old-fashioned way back at the 1988 Pikes Peak International Hillclimb and is all the more manly as a result (notice him raising his hand to block out the glare from the sun at one point…)
It’s terrifying, entrancing, utterly beautiful and truly gob-smacking. And it’s called “Climb Dance”.
Ari, we love you.
Close your mouth: Finland powerslides across Pikes Peak
We’re tired from the long hours of our daytime jobs. Exhausted from the endless amount of online drivel that we and you continue to spew in utterly unabated fashion. Oh, and we’ve also been focusing far too much on those hunks of metal and their nylon straps that dangle from our wrists, however damned impressive [...]
3 Responses to “Close your mouth: Finland powerslides across Pikes Peak”
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Straight-Six
29 June 2010
So cool, so collected, so able. And, uh, I’m married to one!
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[...] a man aligns with a machine and a track and gives us a display that is truly divine. We shared Ari Vatanen pounding Pike’s Peak with you, but what follows is just as noteworthy – perhaps more [...]
The Prodigal Fool
29 June 2010
The Finns. Gotta love ‘em.