The 15 Coolest Cars at the 2022 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb

The Pikes Peak International Hill Climb is enormously popular outside of America. Here at home, however, it just hasn't caught on like it should despite the 2022 edition being the 100th running of the event, which began in 1916 as a tourist promotion. But with several big names competing in this year's PPIHC, including Gymkhana star Ken Block, drifter Dai Yoshihara, and MotorTrend favorites Randy Pobst and Jonny Lieberman , the mountain's popularity and the public's interest in the hill climb did seem to rise.

British driver Robin Shute won this year's Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, his third overall win and second at full length. ( The 2021 event ran a shortened course due to bad weather at the summit. ) Battling heavy fog that severely limited visibility on most of the mountain, he ran the 12.42-mile, 156-turn course in 10:09.525, almost a minute behind his winning 2019 time. As neat as his 2018 Wolf TSC-FS car is—sort of a cross between an Indy car and an old open-roof Le Mans Prototype—we saw 15 other cars on the mountain that were even cooler.

Really a purpose-built, tube-frame race car made to somewhat resemble a 1998 Toyota Tacoma, the elder Millen claimed two of his four overall Pikes Peak wins in this "truck" in 1998 and 1999. (His son, Rhys, has since won twice overall.) Powered by a 2.1-liter turbocharged Toyota four-cylinder making 1,000 hp and driving all four wheels, it wasn't quite enough to break his own 1997 record of 10:04.540 set in a similarly powered, all-wheel-drive Toyota Celica, which stills stands as the all-time record on dirt. (The road was paved in stages between 2002 and 2012 and is fully paved today.) The truck has run a few exhibition events in recent years, including at the Goodwood Festival of Speed . This year, even at 71 years old and despite the terrible weather, Millen managed to come in second in class and eighth overall.

Professional racer and MotorTrend contributor Randy Pobst was back at Pikes Peak again this year with a modified Model S Plaid named Dark Helmet (a Spaceballs movie reference like the "Plaid" model name). Pobst's team hoped to set a record for four-door electric vehicles with this Tesla's massive aerodynamic elements, big brakes, adjustable coil-over shocks, and a fully stripped interior. (The overall course record was set by the Volkswagen ID.R purpose-built EV race car .) Unfortunately, the bad weather induced windshield fogging, and Pobst couldn't find the defroster control buried in on-screen menus while piloting the car up Pikes Peak at more than 100 mph. Although he was able to loosen his shoulder belts enough to reach out and wipe part of the windshield with his glove, his run was ruined and he finished behind a modified Tesla Model 3.

Named "Old Smokey," this 1949 Ford pickup started its racing life as a $225 Craigslist find before owner Scott Birdsall turned it into a Pikes Peak record holder. With 1,400 hp under the hood courtesy of a race-built Cummins 6.7-liter turbodiesel engine originally pulled from a 2008 Dodge heavy-duty truck, Old Smokey is officially the quickest diesel-powered vehicle ever to climb the mountain, with a time of 11:24.065 set in 2020 by Birdsall. This year, it was driven by fellow custom car builder and former Fast N' Loud star Aaron Kaufman, who's raced Pikes Peak previously in his own car. Birdsall attempted to set a new record in a diesel-powered Le Mans Prototype car, but cooling trouble kept him from beating Kaufman in Old Smokey, much less the record.

Daijiro "Dai" Yoshihara is best known as two-time Formula Drift champion, but lately he's been going fast without going sideways. He won his class during the 2020 running of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb in a heavily modified Toyota GR86 running a 2JZ engine . Last year, he showed up with Evasive Motorsports' modified 2018 Tesla Model 3 , but the run was ruined when the car immediately went into limp-home mode right off the starting line. This year was all about redemption, and it was accomplished. Yoshihara was far and away the quickest EV driver on the mountain; he finished second in class and 18 seconds ahead of Randy Pobst's Tesla Model S Plaid. Like that car, this Model 3 features extensive aerodynamic, cooling, braking, suspension, and weight-saving modifications rather than increased power.

Jeff Zwart is a Pikes Peak legend, having won his class more than 10 times now. He's also a legend in the Porsche community . When the company built a modern 991-generation 911 GT2 RS Clubsport into a tribute to the famous 1978 Porsche 935 race car known as Moby Dick, Zwart knew he had to drive it at Pikes Peak. The 700-hp car is wrapped in a special body shell made of steel, aluminum, carbon fiber, and Kevlar parts to bring the weight down to just more than 3,000 pounds. This was his third year running the car, and despite driving in the "most difficult weather conditions I have ever encountered," Zwart finished second in class and seventh overall.

Yes, you read that correctly. Cole Powelson of Lyfe Motorsport removed the GT-R's gas-powered twin-turbo V-6 and replaced it with a Ford 6.0-liter Power Stroke turbodiesel V-8 engine. Powelson raced the rebuilt car, which had been totaled in a flood, for years with the original engine (modified to 1,200 hp) before deciding to rebuild it and take on the diesel record at Pikes Peak. Unfortunately, the Riffraff Diesel engine suffered mechanical issues all week leading up to the race and only made it partway up the course on race day before Powelson was forced to pull over and give up.

Back when that path up Pikes Peak was a dirt road, vehicles like Levi Shirley's buggy were a lot more common. Even when the road was partially paved in the 2000s, a lot of the cars still looked like this, as they needed the ground clearance, suspension travel, and knobby tires to run on both dirt and pavement. These days, a high-horsepower buggy is a bit of an anachronism, but it sure is fun to watch. That was especially true this year, when Shirley drove too fast into the infamous Engineer's Corner, understeered off the road, rolled down an embankment , landed on his wheels, and took off back up the mountain and finished the race.

Pikes Peak isn't contested only by purpose-built race cars. This year featured a number of nearly stock vehicles lightly modified for safety. Leading the charge was the 2022 Porsche 911 Turbo S Lightweight driven by three-time overall winner David Donner. Featuring a roll cage, fuel cell, and gutted interior, the 911 was effectively stock, yet Donner blew away every actual race car but one, the entry driven by overall winner Robin Shute. Yes, a stock 911 came in second overall with a time of 10:34.053, though the podium finish can be attributed in part to the terrible weather that slowed most of the racers. Regardless, it was a massively impressive accomplishment.

Street-legal supercars put a lot of high-powered race cars to shame this year at Pikes Peak, and helping to deliver the blows was a factory-backed 2022 Acura NSX Type S machine driven by chassis engineer Nick Robinson. Like David Donner's 911 Turbo S, the NSX Type S was lightly modified for safety, and Robinson pulled off a run of 11:14.682, good for third in class and 14th overall. Robinson's brother, James, planned to run a highly modified NSX at this year's event, as well, but electrical gremlins kept it off the mountain.

Like Dai Yoshihara, official BMW performance driving instructor Matt Mullins is best known for being part of the team that set the Guinness World Record for the longest drift . Also like Dai, he's very quick on a road course. In fact, he's so quick that he took a bone-stock 2022 BMW M5 up the mountain in 12:05.527. That would've put him in 35th place overall, beating half the field of 70 cars, had he not been in the "non-competitive" Parade of Champions class driving without personal safety equipment or vehicle safety modifications.

Street cars beating race cars is pretty cool, but street cars turned into wild race cars is even cooler. This 1970 Porsche 914 Widebody (squint, it's really a 914 ) is absolutely wild, from its major aerodynamic features to its 7.0-liter turbocharged Chevrolet LS7 V-8. Built and driven by Chris Strauch, this mad machine is known as the Porschevy. Purchased in 2014, it's been transformed into a tube-frame race car and has run for several years now, with any and all winnings donated to the Colorado Springs Down Syndrome Association in honor of Strauch's daughter, Grace.

One of the great things about Pikes Peak is that it attracts all kinds, from well-funded, factory-backed efforts down to barn-built, home-brew racers. The best are the wild, one-off builds from shops not afraid to try out new and different aerodynamic configurations to find the money setup for tackling this tall, bumpy mountain. This year's favorite was the Enviate Hypercar Evo driven by Paul Gerrard in all its crazy aerodynamic glory. In the past, something that looked this crazy was the result of a home-garage tinkerer with all the time in the world for trial and error, but with basic Computational Fluid Dynamics modeling software available for less than $10,000 these days, serious downforce is available to anyone with the talent to use the software. The Enviate car set a top-speed record last year of 147 mph and scored a second-place overall finish, but this year Gerrard finished eighth in class and 42nd overall.

Pikes Peak is a truly "run what ya' brung" kind of event (as long as it passes tech inspection), so why not race something unusual? The blocky shape of a big-body Bronco from the mid-'90s isn't the first place a lot of people would begin when building a race car, but Jimmy Ford isn't most people. Originally built for rallying, the tube-frame truck looks like a dirt circle-track car with a Bronco body on it, and the rake on it is something else. Unfortunately, "Bronczilla" suffered an engine failure during the run up the hill and didn't finish, but it sure looked cool doing it.

A '91 Chevrolet Camaro is cool in a Radwood kind of way , but what's really cool about this matte black IROC is the driver. Ralph Murdock is 82 years old, and he still ripped up the mountain in his bitchin' Camaro in a respectable 13:18.185, good for 52nd overall and quick enough to beat a guy in a 2022 Ford Shelby GT500. As race announcer Tanner Foust said of Murdock during his run, the guy makes it feel less scary for a race car driver to get older. If he can do this at 82, we all still have plenty of years of hauling ass ahead of us.

We can't go without talking about the Hoonipigasus , a 1,400-hp homage to the iconic 1971 Porsche 917/20 "Pink Pig." Ken Block's latest out-of-this-world creation was built by California-based BBi Autosport using a classic air-cooled 911 fitted with a hand grenade of a 4.0-liter twin-turbo flat-six engine driving all four wheels. Unfortunately, the project began somewhat at the last minute, and the team had a lot of tuning left to do during the practice and qualifying sessions leading up to race day, especially in the handling department as the car spun in nearly every practice session. The bigger problem, though, was the engine, which blew up in practice and couldn't be repaired by race day, forcing Block to withdraw from the event.