"Before I was old enough to walk, my dad was taking me to various types of racing events, from local drag racing to the Daytona 500," says Patrick Rall, a lifetime automotive expert, diehard Dodge fan, and respected auto journalist for over 10 years. "He owned a repair shop and had a variety of performance cars when I was young, but by the time I was 16, he was ready to build me my first drag car – a 1983 Dodge Mirada that ran low 12s. I spent 10 years traveling around the country, racing with my dad by my side. While we live in different areas of the country, my dad still drag races at 80 years old in the car that he built when I was 16 while I race other vehicles, including my 2017 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat and my 1972 Dodge Demon 340.
"Although I went to college for accounting, my time in my dad’s shop growing up allowed me the knowledge to spend time working as a mechanic before getting my accounting degree, at which point I worked in the office of a dealership group. While I was working in the accounting world, I continued racing and taking pictures of cars at the track. Over time, I began showing off those pictures online and that led to my writing.
"Ten years ago, I left the accounting world to become a full-time automotive writer and I am living proof that if you love what you do, you will never “work” a day in your life," adds Rall, who has clocked in time as an auto mechanic, longtime drag racer and now automotive journalist who contributes to nearly a dozen popular auto websites dedicated to fellow enthusiasts.
"I love covering the automotive industry and everything involved with the job. I was fortunate to turn my love of the automotive world into a hobby that led to an exciting career, with my past of working as a mechanic and as an accountant in the automotive world provides me with a unique perspective of the industry.
"My experience drag racing for more than 20 years coupled with a newfound interest in road racing over the past decade allows me to push performance cars to their limit, while my role as a horse stable manager gives me vast experience towing and hauling with all of the newest trucks on the market today.
This week’s Black Friday video starts off like many of them, with a 2g Dodge Ram powered by a Cummins Turbo Diesel on a dyno. This particular Ram is on a portable dyno at an event and the cameraman is standing off in the distance with the camera running – when the smoke attacks. As […] More »
This week’s Truckin Fast Wednesday video features a 2nd gen Dodge Dakota regular cab short bed (RCSB) pickup showing off its drifting skills. The first 25 seconds or so of the video show the Dakota smoking the tires and spinning the truck round and round, before it gets traction and speeds off into the distance. […] More »
Dodge CEO Tim Kuniskis announced in early August that the 2015 Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat with the standard 8-speed TorqueFlite automatic transmission would run an incredible quarter mile time of 11 seconds flat with the stock tires. That is 2 tenths faster than the Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat with the same drivetrain, but when the […] More »
This week’s Tire Shredding Tuesday video travels to Denmark, where a 1970 Dodge Monaco is backed into the burnout box for a little smokey fun. All that we know about this huge Dodge 2-door sedan is that it is powered by a 440 cubic inch Mopar big block that makes very short work of the […] More »
This week’s Muddy Monday video features a 2nd gen Dodge Ram participating in a mud bog event that has the competitors charging up and over a big jump, before slamming into a lake of muddy water. I have seen other videos from the Country Compound mud bog jump and unlike this Ram, many of them […] More »
The odds are good that if you have a modified Dodge Ram truck, at some point you have been driving along, minding your own business when there was suddenly a cop riding your bumper for no good reason. You know as well as I do that he is just waiting for a reason to pull […] More »
While the unfortunate odds indicate that many of us won’t ever own a 2015 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat, it is nice to dream and today my Question of the Week wants to know what you would do with the car if you were lucky enough to have one of the 2015 Hellcat Challengers. With 707 […] More »