Hoonigan video & Gale’s reaction

The news of the week wasn’t something that happened internally here at Banks, but it did affect the diesel community inadvertently. Hoonigan posted the latest episode of their Knuckle Busters Project Cars series in which they’re preparing a Gen V Camaro to run a standing mile at 200 MPH. The twist is that the car will be powered by a 1,000-horsepower fully-built Duramax LBZ fed by compound turbos.

Hoonigan does nice work. Their series are informative and entertaining, and you can bet we’ve been following the progress of this build and are rooting for them. Going 200 in a diesel-powered Camaro is totally doable. After all, Banks went 222 MPH in a Cummins-powered Dodge Dakota in 2002.

But when episode 10 of the series dropped this week, Banks fans were quick to light up our social feeds and Gale’s in particular. He was woken Monday to the sound of his phone vibrating off of the nightstand. His Facebook Messenger was going nuts. “Gale, have you seen the latest Hoonigan video? You’ve gotta watch this!”

Before the 78-year-old turbocharging guru had a chance to see the video, we convinced him to watch it on camera. We set up a computer in the race shop and clicked play as the cameras rolled. What you’ll see is Gale’s unrehearsed reactions to a diesel dyno session gone wrong.

Final thought before you click play, Dan and the Hoonigan team are clearly talented fabricators. We’ve spoken to them at length. They simply appear to have been misguided by a few “diesel experts.”