By: Dave Abrahams
Charlotte, North Carolina - What you are looking at are, of course, studio shots of Ken Block's 620kW, all wheel-drive 1965 Ford Mustang replica, star of Gymkhana Seven.
The Hooncorn was built for Block and Hoonigan Racing by ASD Motorsports in Charlotte, North Carolina, home of Nascar racing, over a period of two years, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the original Pony Car in 2014.
Any custom performance car project starts with the engine, and in this case ASD went straight to the top - a 6.7-litre Roush Yates V8 that comes out of the crate kicking out a reliable 620kW and 980Nm.
That's the point of spending the money for a top-class 'crate' engine; you know what you're getting and, more importantly, you know it will work.
The Yates V8 was mated to a one-off modified Sadev six-speed all-wheel drive with a hydraulic handbrake system, and installed in a specially made all-steel ASD tubular chassis with integral roll-cage.
RARE BIRD
Since all-wheel drive racing cars are rare birds in Nascar country, ASD designed the suspension geometry from scratch and fabricated the components and dampers in-house.
The 1965 Notchback replica body with carbon-fibre outer panels is actually significantly wider than the original but the shape was carefully 'stretched' to fit the ASD chassis by Mustang specialist Vaughn Gittin Jr at his RTR tuning shop, taking design cues from WRC cars, DTM sedans and even toy cars that Block had as a child!
As with all such engineering projects, there were hang-ups along the way, and Block had time for only one test run with the completed chassis (wearing only the centre rear section of the body!) in a deserted parking lot, before the car was trailered to Las Vegas for its public debut at the 2014 SEMA show - and the rest, of course, is history.
Scroll down to watch that test run.