Even if you’ve only seen car stunts in movies and video games, you probably still have a
good idea of how difficult they are.
They take an immense amount of skill, and the drivers, even with years of experience
risk their lives and reputation every single time.
There are only a handful of people who can actually pull off these incredible driving
feats, and today I’m going to show you some of the very best!
Let’s get it on!
DRIVING IN REVERSE Driving in reverse isn’t an easy task for
most drivers, but for some driving backwards is a walk in the park!
Harpreet Dev is one of those special few, and he’s taken it to the next level by driving
everywhere in reverse for more than 15 years!
This wasn’t a coincidence though, one day his car broke down in the middle of the road
and he needed to get home anyway, so the driver made use of what he had and drove all the
way back looking through the rear window.
He soon got so good that he even took it a step further and decided to become a mechanic,
so he could redesign his gearbox to have 4 reverse gears and one forward.
Now at speeds of up to 50 miles per hour and Back Gear Champion written across the side
of the car, he works as a taxi driver, taking all his clients everywhere in reverse.
He’s become a bit of a celebrity in his areas and it’s easy to see why - his backward
driving skills in traffic and at those speeds are very obviously second to none!
EXTREME TYRE CHANGE Driving on two wheels is actually surprisingly
common in Saudi Arabia, but to those of us who don’t live there, it’s still pretty
unreal.
It’s known as sidewall skiing and it started in Denmark in the ‘60s before Hollywood
action movies started using it, but it seems to have become a hobby for young men taking
advantage of the empty Saudi Arabian desert roads.
They get the cars onto their sides using a ramp or an abrupt turn with a top-heavy car,
but it’s not exactly easy to achieve - they have to watch their speed very closely and
steer precisely to keep the car tilted just the right way without tipping over.
Pictures and videos show these adrenaline junkies taking the stunt to the next level
by hanging out of the window of the moving cars or lying in the road as their friends
drive past them, as though driving the car on two wheels wasn’t dangerous enough.
They’ve even been known to change tyres while the car has two wheels in the air!
And if you think that’s impressive, how about using your friend as a jump rope as
they swing from the handlebars of a quad bike doing donuts.
No, seriously take a look at this!
CAR BARREL ROLL Stunt pilots are known to pull off some incredible
barrel rolls in the right plane and they’re always impressive, but it’s one thing to
achieve that when you’re flying through the air, it’s another to do it in a car.
To release their new E-Pace crossover, Jaguar enlisted the skills of top-class stunt driver
Terry Grant to pull off this unbelievable stunt.
It’s no small feat, requiring him to hit the ramp at exactly the right speed, handle
5G’s of force while in the air, and handle the car perfectly on the landing, but he’s
an expert and his execution of this near-impossible stunt is simply breathtaking.
As a result, he earned himself a Guinness World Record in the process for furthest barrel
roll in a production vehicle, but he didn’t need to aim for distance - the record was
guaranteed since he’s the only person in history to ever even attempt the stunt.
It doesn’t get much more impressive than that.
DANGEROUS BUS ROUTE If you’ve driven on a mountain road even
once in your life you’ll know just how terrifying it is.
They’re often narrow roads with sharp turns and things blocking your view, and nobody
needs all that when one wrong move will send you into a freefall down a mountainside.
But there are some drivers who do that every day - this heroic bus driver is one of them.
He’s had one of the most dangerous jobs in the world for over 50 years, driving across
a deadly stretch of the Andes mountains.
Every year, 1000 people die driving on Peru’s mountain roads, but Glorioso keeps going every
day, traversing a section switchbacks known as The Horse Killer and sections of road only
a few inches wider than the bus he’s driving and with no barriers to stop the bus going
over the side.
This is one bus route that’s allowed delays - it’s so dangerous, even one wrong move
could have fatal consequences for him and his passengers, so people are happy with a
slow ride.
In fact, the locals have a saying: It’s better to arrive a little late in this world,
than early in the next.
GYMKHANA NINE If you’ve driven a car in everyday life,
you’ve probably had a daydream or two about how cool it would be to kick into high speed
and use your town like a car parkour course.
Well, Ken Block does exactly that.
He calls it Gymkhana and it’s basically him fulfilling the dream of turning an urban
industrial landscape into a driver’s playground.
But just because it’s a dream come true, doesn’t mean it’s easy.
His videos are shot over days, but that doesn’t mean he makes it easy for himself - he’s
insistent on nailing every trick, even when it’s dodging trains or coming nail-bitingly
close to the edge of the piece of concrete separating him from the water, he does it
all for real.
And it’s not just his life at stake: the crew filming his breathtaking stunts often
get dangerously close to his screeching tyres.
One wrong move could spell the end for all of them.
But to them, it’s all worth it and it’s easy to see why: the skill and control needed
to complete a course like this one makes for a mesmerizing and adrenaline-fuelling watch.
TRUCK JUMP Sports cars doing amazing things is almost
commonplace, but you wouldn’t usually expect a truck to pull off an incredible stunt.
The world is full of surprises though, and this is definitely one of them.
Gregg Godfrey, a member of the daredevil family known as the Godfrey Clan, set a world record
by jumping a semi-truck over the famous Evel Knievel gas guzzler.
But he didn’t just set a record, he pulled off a stunt worthy of his daredevil hero and
absolutely obliterated the previous record which was an already impressive 83feet, with
an astounding 166ft jump.
That would be impressive just with a car, but in a semi-truck, it’s almost too amazing
to be believed.
NARROWEST TWO WHEELS Any car driving on two wheels is always going
to be impressive, but imagine how much more impressive it would be if they weren’t on
a road.
Well three Chinese stunt drivers set out to break the world record for driving on the
narrowest platform on two wheels.
The three drivers each had multiple attempts at this amazing stunt and fell short repetitively,
with the car tipping and rolling off the platform so many times it’s amazing to think that
any of them would keep going without losing tenacity.
Three drivers tried, but only one succeeded: Li Long.
After a few attempts, he finally managed to drive the full 328 feet along the incredibly
narrow 31-inch platform on two wheels.
This required him to steer the car consistently to maintain its balance on two wheels, an
already difficult task made even more difficult when you have to avoid steering off the edge
of the platform.
It’s an incredibly impressive stunt and, given how many failures it took to achieve
it, you probably won’t see anyone else achieving it any time soon.
HYDROPLANING We tend to think of Formula 1 as high-octane
driving, but have you heard about Formula Offroad?
In remote areas of Iceland, drivers compete in this incredible race featuring all kinds
of seemingly impossible stunts, one of them being hydroplaning, which literally means
driving on water.
They basically turn their cars into skipping stones, and it’s seriously impressive, but
if you want to see the best of the best, you need to turn to Guðbjörn Grímsson.
He takes Hydroplaning to the next level - back in 2014, he managed to drive his 1600 horsepower
buggy across a 1001 foot-long lake.
It was deep enough that he would have been completely submerged if the stunt went wrong,
but he approached it seemingly without fear and his handling is impeccable, clocking speeds
of 54 miles per hour.
Speed is absolutely essential for the stunt to work but maintaining it takes great skill
and power - the rapid rotation of the wheels is what keeps the car above water by allowing
the tread of the tyres to push the water back and out behind the car.
Still, even knowing how it’s done, you wouldn’t find most drivers attempting such a difficult
and dangerous stunt, and if they did, they almost certainly wouldn’t do it nearly as
well as Grimmsson.
FASTEST SLALOM You’ve definitely seen a slalom before,
whether it was on the slopes or at sea, but I’ll bet you’ve never seen a car try it
before.
Racing driver Jia Qiang is the Guinness World Record title holder for fastest vehicle slalom,
but it didn’t come easy.
He already held the Guinness World Record for longest drive on side wheels in a car
in a confined space, and he wanted to push himself further, so he set up a 50-pole slalom
course at an airport in China.
To make matters worse, not only was the road terrible and covered in potholes and loose
stones, but he had never been able to practice the full 50-pole slalom before he had to do
it in front of the Guinness world record judges.
The odds were stacked against him, but he was determined: he completed the run 3 times,
bettering his speed with each effort as he learnt to control the car over the potholes
and maintain his speed and handling over the great distance.
Finally, he ended up with the incredible speed of just 48.114 seconds.
So sneaking out at night to practice driving in his parent’s car when he was a teenager
seriously paid off.
GIANT SPEED BUMP For the advert for the Range Rover Evoque,
they decided to get a bit creative.
Instead of a flashy ad featuring moody music and lots of close-ups, Land Rover set up a
3-foot 3-inch high speed bump in the middle of London.
While we don’t know how many of these people are paid actors and how many are passers by,
many of the reactions seem real as they watch everyday family cars either turn and run from
the huge obstacle or try and fail miserably to make it over the top.
Finally, they rub salt into the wounds of everyone who couldn’t conquer the challenge
by effortlessly driving a Range Rover Evoque elegantly over the top of the impossible speed
bump and down the other side like it was hardly a challenge at all.
The spectator’s rightly gaze in wonder at the amazing driving, or perhaps the even more
incredible car, as it glides over the top and off down the street, leaving the other
drivers who tried to get over the comically large speed bump and their now-dented cars
in its wake.
The best adverts are unforgettable, and this one certainly needs to go into that category
because, if you ever find yourself staring down a giant speed bump, you’ll definitely
find yourself wishing you were in a Range Rover Evoque.