For what would become his final Gymkhana video and the twelfth installment in the series, Ken Block and his team produced what would be his final masterpiece. Recently released to the public and titled Ken Block’s Electrikhana TWO, the raucous short was shot in Mexico City with Block piloting an all-electric Audi called the S1 Hoonitron.
These celebrities love their Mopars.
Block once again shows us electric vehicles don’t have to be all about saving the planet or looking down our noses at people who drive “dinosaurs.” Instead, he shows they can be legitimate performance machines capable of drifting through turns and executing hairpin turns with precision, all without using some artificial intelligence to drive the car.
We’ve been worried about how modern cars are overall becoming increasingly boring, especially with the whole EV push. Sure, they’re great for the old pocket protector club who think Tesla literally invented four-wheel steering, but for gearheads having apps controlling what your ride does on the road makes a car just a coffin on four wheels.
What’s not fair about this video is how Block got a handbrake in his Audi S1, something which has been taken away out of virtually every modern vehicle and replaced by a button. While we wouldn’t use the handbrake on public roads, it would be great to have one for track or off-road use and we wish manufacturers would bring them back, at least in performance cars.
The sounds made by the Audi S1 Hoonitron are more like what we’d expect from vehicles in Tron and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. But it doesn’t eclipse the rumble of a built V8 or even a V10. If this is the future we have to look forward to, and we have doubts that’s the case, while the symphonic nature of performance cars will be deficient, the late Ken Block has reminded us yet again not everything has to be a sanitized, zombified Tesla driving experience.
Thank you, Ken, for one last ride.
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