Ken Block was born in Long Beach, California, in 1967, and before he raced anything he built a business. In 1994 he co-founded DC Shoes, which grew from skateboarding into one of the most recognisable action-sports brands in the world. He came to rallying late, in his mid-thirties, and was named rookie of the year in Rally America in 2005.
In 2008 he posted a short film of himself sliding a Subaru around an empty airfield, through cones and around obstacles, with no competition and no point except showing what a car could do. He called it Gymkhana. It went round the world, and the sequels — through warehouses, city streets, docks and at one point the whole of San Francisco — were watched hundreds of millions of times.
He built the cars around the films. The Hoonicorn was a 1965 Mustang rebuilt with four-wheel drive and, in its later form, a twin-turbo engine of around 1,400 horsepower; Audi later built him the electric S1 Hoonitron. He raced in the World Rally Championship for Ford and in World Rallycross with the Focus RS RX, and his company, Hoonigan, became a brand of its own. The Hoonicorn, the Hoonitron and the Focus are all in this catalogue.
On 2 January 2023 he was killed in a snowmobile accident on steep terrain in Utah. He was fifty-five.
His daughter Lia now rallies, and a generation of drivers who started by watching his films on their phones cite him as the reason they began.
Foto: Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
The cars
Cars in the catalog he drove, won in, or that were named after him.
