Ken Block isn’t quite as successful in proper rallying as he is in hooning around airfields and empty parking lots. You might argue that’s because Ken is used to tarmac and most of WRC events are on gravel. But you see that’s just not true, because on the evidence of this video he is just as good on gravel as he is on asphalt. In this film he introduces his H.F.H.V Ford Fiesta to this kinda of surface for the first time at Dirtfish Rally School in Snoqualmie Falls, where they filmed much of the cult-status TV series “Twin Peaks”.

The size and cost of GoPro cameras mean you can put tens of them in the car and record your action from almost every angle. You can wear it on you helmet, put it on the roof, stick it to the side of the car… anywhere you want. This nice montage of Ken Block’s 2011 highlights, put together by Monster World Rally and GoPro, shows clearly what we’re on about. So if you think you can be the next Kenny from the Block, go get a couple of GoPros and start hooning about. At the very least you make some funny fails that will make you famous on YouTube!

It doesn’t have to be Gymkhana special. Ken Block can just drive around L.A. and be amusing. Well, only if he can take his H.F.H.V. Ford Fiesta to the streets. It’s not a road legal car of course, but when your sponsor is Monster Energy and you promise to promote Microsoft’s SYNC along the way, that’s a different story. So, businesses get publicized, Ken gets paid, and we all get a cool video to watch. Everybody’s happy!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Ken Block continues expanding business by entering the world of toys with Hot Wheels.

Together they launched a new line of Ken Block hot wheels and RC cars just in time for the 2011 holiday season.

Ken Block lineup includes the 1:64 scale die-cast ’11 Ken Block Ford Fiesta Hot Wheels car. Available in both black and white liveries, and the Hot Wheels RC Nitro Speeders Ken Block Fiesta, a small, self-containing RC car and controller combination Gymkhana FOUR-style. The first item is at the $1 price point, and the second just 26 bucks.

the last piece in the lineup is the 1:16 scale Hot Wheels RC Ken Block RC Stunt Car, a fully functional remote controlled car that allows users to pretend they’re Block himself in one of his highly-viewed Gymkhana videos thanks to two different drift modes that allow the user to pull both wide and tight drifts with a simple one-touch control unit. This more complex toy is prices at $45.

“This is a dream come true, I never actually thought I’d have my own line of Hot Wheels cars,” said Block. “I’ve been a huge fan of Hot Wheels for years, when I was a kid they were all I played with. I’d collect them, I’d jump them over things, I’d send them flying off of stuff, I’d race them around on the floor. I loved my Hot Wheels die-casts. So to be where I am now with my driving career and this new collaboration with Hot Wheels not just for my own1:64 cars, but also for two different remote control versions? It’s amazing, I’m beyond stoked.”

Well, not all of it. This is some helmet cam footage of Walter’s arena in Wales, a gravel stage of the Rally GB, filmed by Ken Block in one of his practice runs in the Ford Fiesta WRC. We’ve seen before what a Formula 1 driver sees while he’s racing, and here’s the rally driver’s experience. You have to say, rallying is much more frightening, but in a good way! Traveling that fast on wet gravel requires amazing driving skills, and balls made of solid steel.

Top Gear Australia TV show might be cancelled, but the magazine is still very much alive. This tire smoke-heavy show you see here was organized by them for a cover shoot. They got Ken Block from all the way from America and the Stig from UK for this event. Mind you, we have a sneaking suspicion he’s not the British Stig. Anyways, it’s nice to see two of the biggest hoon masters on earth playing together!

A bunch of very determined and dedicated guys decided to created a low-budget, or rather no-budget, version of the Ken Block’s Gymkhana. You have to say, they nailed it. The video they’ve produced features powerslides, smoke, slo-mo and everything! Honestly, its very refreshing. Watch it after the jump.

And here’s the Gymkahna FOUR, featuring Kenny from the Block, the H.F.H.V Ford Fiesta, and a strong touch of Hollywood. Too much special effect? Well, maybe. But come on, that’s what makes it more awesome. All that sliding and drifting is cool, but they needed something new to keep it fresh.

So hit the jump, select 1080p, and buckle up for 10 minutes of very sophisticated hoonage!

When you are promoting a big internet sensation, what better way than using another big internet sensation to do the job. That’s what the promoters of Gymkhana FOUR have done. They went to guys from Epic Meal Time to count the reasons why the FOUR is gonna be so awesome, in their own stupid but cool way. Good, but they could have asked Kate Upton. I mean she too gets millions of Youtube hits, doesn’t she! That said, it coulda been worse, they could have gone to Kimbo Slice!

Watch the vid after the jump.

Monster World Rally team released the first teaser for Ken Block’s Gymkhana FOUR, coming out on Tuesday August 16th, 2011. It is in fact a showcase of Ken’s Ford Fiesta H.F.H.V.’s Anti-lag (Hybrid Function Hoon Vehicle) and the new GoPro filming technology. So in there words it’s a very useless teaser because it doesn’t show any of the real action! For that you have to wait a few more days. With a car like this, Gymkhana 4 sounds promising.

As you know these days Ken Block competes in different forms of motorsport including Rallycross, WRC, and of course Gymkhana. So he’s invented a machine that can do all those things at once. It saves him the hassle of changing cars all the time! It’s called the H.F.H.V which sounds like a virus of some kind, but actually stands for Hybrid Function Hoon Vehicle, and that kinda explains it all. The multi-purpose rally car – based on Ford Fiesta RS WRC – was revealed this past weekend at the Gymkhana World Tour in Los Angeles.

Check out the video after the jump to learn more about the H.F.H.V.

“The H.F.H.V. is the best of all worlds for me,” says Block. “The current WRC Fiesta is the greatest handling car I have driven, but it lacks the sheer grunt that the 2.0L engine in the WRC Focus created. The H.F.H.V. brings those two things together, and the result is a manic beast that is just too much fun to drive.”

These days performance driving – insane drifting, if you will – is more popular than Formula 1 in the world of motorsports. So Ford launched the Octane Academy challenge, which is sort of like American Idol, but a bit more manly!

The idea is, fans will come up with videos of themselves performing cool tricks and submit them to the academy to be reviewed. Those who get elected will go to next round, involving on- and-off road challenges, running with Octane Academy’s founding members – Ken Block, Tanner Foust, Brian Deegan and Vaughn Gittin Jr.

This video submission thing will almost certainly result in lots of funny videos as well, of things going wrong for the participants trying to impress the judges. Can’t wait for that!

Four camps will be hosted over the course of the year, one by each founding member of Octane Academy. In each camp, contestants will go head-to-head in a battery of creative challenges and daunting dares over one long weekend.  Ford’s action sports drivers will design their ultimate playground, hosting their respective elite winners on their terms and their turf. Each camp will give participants a crash course in how to fearlessly master the road while testing their attitudes, athleticism and audacity.

At the end there will be only on winner, who will get a one-of-a-kind vehicle created by Block, Foust, Deegan or Gittin Jr. and possibly becomes the next big thing in the sport.

The first fantasy camp will kick off in November, hosted by Ford RallyCross and Off-Road truck racer Deegan. This video below will give you a better understanding of what’s the Octane Academy all about:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Travis Pastrana is not as famous as Ken Block, mainly because he’s just not as good a driver! But he and his publicity people believe it is also because Travis is not getting as much media as Ken. How are they gonna solve that? That’s easy, by copying one of Ken’s most popular promo films featuring Monster chicks. They’ve made a spoof of that ad to unveil Pastrana’s new X Games rally livery. You can tell it’s not going to be as successful as Ken’s film though, because of the girls!

The latest ad for DiRT3 video game is a remake of Ken Block’s Battersea Gymkhana through tilt-shift lens. And, well, it’s much awesomer than the original! This miniaturised version of Gymkhana gives you a better view of the stunts and will make you adore Ken’s driving skills even more. If you think you can do this, then get a copy of DiRT3 as Battersea Powerstation Gymkhana is actually a level of the game. See if you got what it takes!

Thanks to Pirelli, the official Formula 1 tire supplier, driftmeister Ken Block is about to make his Formula 1 debut.

Kenny, as I’m sure you know, started out by drifting a Subaru and posting the videos on Youtube. They’ve become so popular that turned him into a global mega star. He then tried his hand at professional rallying, which resulted in an ongoing, frustrating effort to secure a decent place between the sport’s giants.

Mr. Block will soon get his first chance behind the wheel of an F1 car on August 5 at Monza race track in Italy. It’s not a modern F1 car mind you, but a 700 hp 2009 Toyota machine, enough to create some spectacular scenes given Ken’s natural habit of going everywhere sideways.

It’s going to be helluva lot harder to drift a F1 car though. So Ken might as well just relax and enjoy his time. Just one thing, we hope he doesn’t think of entering F1. To be honest he shouldn’t have come to WRC either. The guy doesn’t function well under discipline!

This being Ken though, he’s looking forward to have some fun with that F1 car:

“I can’t wait to discover Formula One for myself,” says our Block. “I need to be realistic about what I can do, but I know that it’s going to be a lot of fun and take hooning to a whole new level.”

via: TopGear

We’ve already told you many times about the amazing features of the new Dirt 3, the eighth iteration of Codemaster’ rally games which started back in 1998 with Colin McRae Rally, and the best feature of them all, Gymkhana. Here’s another quick reminder of what’s it all about, with a new trailer of Mr. Gymkhana himself, Kenny from the Block hitting a special stage set at London’s Battersea Power Station in his specially prepared Ford Focus. Everything he does here, you can do in the game. DiRT 3 will hit the stores on May 24th.

With less than two weeks remaining to the release of Dirt 3, here’s a trailer of its highly anticipated Gymkhana Battle in which you get to compete against Ford motorsports superstars Ken Block and Tanner Foust in Rallycross, Head to Head races, and traditional Rally. Now this is a fun car game. We admire what EA did with the latest Need For Speed, but the SHIFT 2 was so technical you could have no fun with it. And what’s the point of a game if it’s no fun? Dirt 3 on the other hand offers plenty of it. You jump into air and do powerslides and donuts and what not, instead of constantly spinning of the track because the “it’s like the real thing.” We don’t want the real thing, we want a game to have fun with!

Ken Block is awesome! Even when he is not doing his Gymkhana thing you can expect him to entertain you every time he gets behind the wheel of car. His latest trick though was not intentional, but still magnificent. Here’s the footage of his crash at Rally de Portugal shakedown run, and as you see he rolls the car several times in the air before landing it on the roof in the ditch. The crash was violent but fortunately Kenny is alright, although he had to check into the hospital for some check ups. The sad thing is he totaled the Fiesta RS that he was supposed to race with in Rally of Portugal! So he’s out of this one.

Yea it’s been a while since the last fresh dose of Ken Block Gymhkana, so they released this bonus edit of the Gymkhana 3 part 2 to keep the fans amused. It features new scenes and more camera angles which basically make it look like a new episode. So if you, like me, won’t go out this weekend and have some time to kill, give it a spin.

Monster World Rally team released a video unveiling Ken Block’s 2011 Ford Fiesta WRC which he will use to compete in nine events of World Rally Championship calendar this season and also in other events like Rally America or X Games. The video includes the team’s 2011 Event Program. Not sure what those Monster chicks do in the film, but they do manage to obscure the car pretty well… not that we’re complaining! Ford Fiesta WRC will also make an appearance at the Geneva Motor Show in March.