Vanderbilt Cup Races

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Jalopnik introduces a new cable series "Car Vs. America" tonight featuring editors Mike Ballaban and Raphael Orlove.  A future segment will highlight a visit to my Waterfront at Roslyn Garage filmed last August.

The show can be seen on Wednesdays at 8:00 PM and 8:30 PM on the Fusion channel found on DirecTV channel #342.

Check out the Alco Black Beast in the introduction to the series...."It's insane!" (0:20 second mark):

Enjoy,

Howard Kroplick

Update: Watch the entire Episode #1:

Car VS. America

Jalopnik Is Coming To TV! Welcome To Car Vs. America, Premiering TONIGHT

Patrick George

They say young people don’t care about cars anymore. They say the culture is dying. They say human driving doesn’t even have a future. You, the Jalopnik community of readers, know that isn’t true. You also know the last place to look for modern car culture is the vast wasteland that is television. But we think we can do car TV better—and so we did.

Because you demanded it, and because questionable decisions are made in the media world every day, Jalopnik is getting a TV show.

Welcome to Car vs. America.

You may have noticed Mike Ballaban and Raphael Orlove haven’t been around much on Jalopnik lately. (You may also be grateful for this, which is fair.) That’s because these scrappy New York editors have spent the last few months planning, producing, writing and starring in our most ambitious project to date—a road trip TV show where they go around America in search of adventure in the weirdest, most wonderful, most questionable cars we could get our hands on.

Think of it as The Grand Tour, except done right, and on a lower budget. A cosmically lower budget. (This is still Jalopnik; you know we’re not fancy.)

What Are You Guys Doing, Exactly?

On Car vs. America, Mike and Raph go skid plate racing with Jason Torchinsky in North Carolina. They hang with the great-grandsons of Preston Tucker to talk about his insane shot at the big guys. They learn to drift in New Jersey and become rally drivers in the Pacific Northwest.

They do extreme off-roading in Jeeps in Pennsyltucky. They conduct a heated race across New York City in their own Yugo and Beetle to determine once and for all which totalitarian government had the best people’s cars.

They drive an imported right-hand drive Toyota MR2, explore the myth and legend of the Ford Crown Victoria, and test their mettle against drag racers in a Mustang GT350R.

In short, it’s Jalopnik, on TV. What’s not to love?

Why Is This Happening?

Because car TV is bad! And we spent years telling you how bad it is, with its endless contrived “deadlines” and tattooed morons wrenching on old muscle cars. (Or standing around while someone else wrenches on them.) So our new overlords at Fusion tapped us to do better.

Plus, the rest of the office relished the chance to have Ballaban and Raph gone for a few months.

They will attempt what few have accomplished: make a car-centric TV show that isn’t terrible.

And they’ll get to know the humans behind the machines. Our guys will travel across the country, meeting the delightfully unhinged characters who make modern car culture possible and tell their stories. That’s what you’ll get in every episode of Car vs. America.