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After a series of Subaru and Fiesta hatchbacks and a classic Ford Mustang, Ken Block’s Gymkhana YouTube series turns 10 climaxing with a twin-turbo, 900hp all-wheel drive truck! Story: Dean Evans
KEN BLOCK’S LATEST BEAST IS A UTE... or a truck, if you prefer. Which it shouldn’t be, as we live in Kiwiland where trucks haul freight. Officially, it’s dubbed ‘Hoonitruck’. And if you don’t know who Ken Block is, pause for a moment and type his name into YouTube, specifically “TheHoonigans” and there will be 2.5 million subscribers and hundreds of millions of video views of his Gymkhana series of videos.
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The latest is Gymkhana 10, launched publicly on December 18, 6am, NZ time, and featuring a 1977 Ford F-150 dubbed the Hoonitruck. A Ford F-series ute in all but its chassis, engine, drivetrain, suspension, brakes, interior... pretty much everything but the cab. AND it’s all-wheel drive! While the shape is Ford, the body panels include hand-shaped military grade aluminium stepsides, making it more a one-off replica racecar without a racing
series, than a ‘Ford’ F-150 pick-up. DC Shoes founder (and seller for $100m) Block grew up in a Ford family, and in a Ford truck, with his late father owning a 1977 Ford F-150 when Ken was a teenager, in which Ken learnt to drive, and cart himself to the motocross track. And Ken had always wanted a truck of that generation. Taking around two years to build, Ford Motor Company-partner Block used the basic
With hundreds of millions of views, if you haven’t seen a Ken Block Gymkhana video, stop, allocate 20 minutes and watch Gymkhana Ten now
shape of an F-150, and wrapped it around a custom-built chassis, and all-wheel drive running gear out to 20-inch 315/35 20-inch Toyo tyres, a project partner, headed up by a Ford Motorsport Roush Yates twin-turbo V6 Ford Ecoboost engine with dry sump, which was pulled from the Ford GT Le Mans racing car program. With 682kW (914hp) and 952Nm, there’s a fairly sizeable lump of relatively
lightweight engine sitting up mid/front, mounted just as much in the front of the cabin as the back of the engine bay, passing through a Sadev sequential six-speed and all-wheel drive. Working with Ford Performance helped secure some very special pieces: the intake manifold was built specifically for Hoonitruck and is 3D printed from metal, consisting of shapes and curves that simply couldn’t be physically manufactured via conventional milling or casting methods. There are also conventional parts used
in an unconventional way, such as the laser cut and electronically bent rear wing that isn’t used for downforce as much as creating an expendable proximity gauge, while Ken is drifting against walls, barriers, old cars or whatever: as it’s much easier to replace the wing than a rear end body panel. Though even that process has been made easy, as the chassis is modular, with four separate sections that can be unbolted and separately replaced in the event of damage ‘when’ it happens, rather than ‘if’, on-site. Built as a ‘camera’ car, there are many film-friendly aspects to Hoonitruck, with almost everything being either quick access, quick release or quick change: those aluminium hand-shaped ‘show’
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