XJ Cherokee with Reversed Steering Is Just as Disastrous as You’d Think
Hoonigan takes this anxiety-inducing Jeep through already-stressful obstacle course. This should go well.
Binaries make life a lot easier. On or off, in or out, good or bad. In a car, if you turn the wheel to the left, the vehicle goes left. Spin it right, the vehicle goes right. Pretty simple stuff. So it should be easy to adapt to the exact opposite of that, correct? That’s what The Hoonigans at Scumbag Labs set out to find using an XJ Jeep Cherokee Sport.
To prepare the battered Jeep for their experiment, the Hoonigans fitted it with harnesses in the front row and a roll bar in the second row, then flipped the position of the XJ’s Pitman Arm, turning left into right and right into left. Then they set up a course at the Irwindale Speedway that consisted of a slalom, clockwise hairpin, figure 8, and “surprise light” that would tell the driver at the last second whether to go right or left (or is that left or right?).
Hoonigans Scotto (aka Brian Scotto), Sara (aka Sara Price), Hert (aka Hertrech Eugene Jr.), and Brad take on the challenge with varying degrees of fear. Scotto admits, “Just driving it in the parking lot, it reminded me of the first time I ever drove a car when I was … 14 years old with my dad and I was just … terrified and intimidated.”
Hert is the first to attempt the course. It goes about as well as you’d expect. He bumps into the plastic barrels that he’s supposed to steer around, gets the XJ onto three wheels at one point, runs into more obstacles, and skids until the tires smoke. He sums his experience up perfectly when he says, “That was terrifying.”
Scotto’s run goes a little better, but not by much. He nails the hairpin and gets off to a good start in the figure 8. Then things go downhill. Scotto runs into some barrels and he overcooks a turn, getting an entire side of tires off of the ground as his passenger Brad screams in terror and delight.
His antics require replacing one of the front tires. The Hoonigans decide to swap it out for a donut spare. Knowing what’s bound to happen eventually, Scotto sarcastically says, “That’s not going to up the danger level at all.”
Sara gets into the driver’s seat next. Hert jumps in beside her. Her first run through is surprisingly clean…at first. She nails both the slalom and the hairpin, but then clobbers a barrier and slams into the surprise light. Her second round with Brad riding shotgun is even worse. Actually, it’s the exact opposite of that because Sara ends the lap by flipping the XJ Cherokee onto its roof. Luckily, she and Brad emerge from the squashed rig unharmed and with their senses of humor intact.
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