Watching Hoonigan’s Gymkhanas is like driving or reading about supercars. After each encounter you wonder how the people in charge of making the next one are going to maintain, let alone surpass, that level of excitement, energy, and innovation.
But Gymkhana 2022 delivers. Florida is the source of plenty of crazy viral videos, which together with the state’s geography makes it the perfect setting for 10 minutes of madness centered around – but not restricted to – Travis Pastrana and his 862 hp (874 PS) “Family Huckster” Subaru GL.
The heavily modified 2.3-liter turbocharged wagon features active aero and a carbon fiber body, plus some serious floor armour that allows it to slide down a set of parallel rails like a skateboard. And that’s far from the sketchiest stunt in the video which shows Pastrana jumping over a helicopter hovering between two sides of a busted bridge, tracking alongside a fighter jet and racing YouTuber Cleetus McFarland and his 3,000 hp (3,042 PS) Chevy El Camino.
We also see the Scooby pinging off its rev limiter at an indicated 165 mph (266 km/h) on a narrow, curving stretch of roadway heading down to the Florida Keys where he jumps a bridge so wildly that it looks like the car’s about to flip on landing, and drift around a monster truck balancing vertically on its front wheels.
Related: Ken Block Finally Drives The Audi S1 Hoonitron The Way It Was Meant To Be Driven
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Pastrana took over from series founder Ken Block in 2020 and any doubts that the series might lose something in the transition have been firmly put to bed with the daredevil’s second outing as the Gymkhana wheelman. Even the sponsored Subaru segment at the end manages to be fun, Pastrana posing as a slimy Florida use car salesman and performing a few spins and jumps in a production 2023 WRX before giving it his seal of approval.
Apart from wondering how many tires the team got through, how badly he was hurt in the opening base jump and how badly the Family Huckster got beat up in the jump outtake at the end, we’ve got one major question: where does the series go from here?
