28 AUGUST 2019 ownerdriver.com.au
BURNOUT
SYMPHONY
mighty machines
Meat pies, Vegemite,
burnouts – all
integral parts of the
Aussie DNA. But for
burnout fanatics,
it’s more than just
a bit of smoke and
shredded rubber: it’s
a true motorsport.
Cobey Bartels gets
down and dirty with
Filthy – the biggest
burnout machine
there is
W
HETHER IT’S A SUBTLE shed skid, a
sneaky clutch kick, or an all-out tyre
fryer... us Aussies love it!
Now look, everyone’s seen burnout
cars – big HP V8s shoehorned into
whatever you can get your hands on.
Be it a Cortina, Corolla, Commodore; as
long as it skids, it’s a go’er!
Well, over a beer or two during the
planning of Mighty Machines, we had a crazy idea ...
Why not go bigger? Why not find the biggest, angriest
burnout machine Australia has to offer?
Well we set out to do just that. Some of you might
remember a particularly sinister yellow White 4000,
built to decimate rubber like nothing else.
How does this sound: 12 cylinders, two turbos
bigger than your head and 900 angry horsepower
ready to obliterate all eight drive tyres? Say hello to ...
‘Filthy’.
Filthy, as you may recall from Owner//Driver’s
January 2019 edition, started life as a highway
specialist, a workhorse built to get from A to B. Well,
fast forward 30 years, the old girl’s had a facelift and a
bit of a career change. It’s all bling and burnouts now!
Proud owner of the wild burnout truck, Mick Lake,
was more than happy to drive the rig out and show
us what it’s capable of, in exchange for some tyres
of course.
The legends at Tyres4U hooked Mick up with eightTop: Ready for battle: More than 3,000hp and a few of the
angriest burnout machines Down Under
Above: Cobey gears up to take the wheel of a 1,200hp XE Falcon
Panel Van – a car built to do one thing and one thing only:
shred rubber!
Double Coin tyres, which proved to hold up well
under immense punishment!
When chatting with Mick, we suggested we pit
Filthy up against other (much smaller) burnout
machines ... not sure how he’d react!
Well, he was keen and put us in touch with his
mate Terry Skene, who happens to own Kingston Park
Raceway in Brisbane.
If it’s got wheels, Terry is your man, and he was
able to line up some mental burnout and drift cars
for us, in what was shaping up to be the ultimate
mechanical showdown.
The aim, aside of course from absolute tyre
torture, was to host a burnout competition between
dedicated big horsepower burnout cars, drift cars and
of course, Filthy.
But, beyond that, we also wanted to provide the
general public with a better understanding of
the sport of burnouts, covering its strong roots in
drag racing and its now worldwide popularity as a
legitimate motorsport.
After leaving it up to Terry to hook us up with the
wildest burnout and drift cars on offer, we turned up
on the day and admittedly our jaws dropped when
we saw what Filthy would be up against.
Well-known burnout chariots Vicious and Gamble
were warming up as we arrived, and their idle alone
could be felt through the ground.
There’s something special about a car with 1,000-