Cars are tools. Primarily we use cars for transportation, but they can also be tools of diversion and fun, tools of community building and human interaction. I don’t need to touch grass, I just need to go for a drive in an old rusty Honda van on the sand dunes. That might fix me.
Fifteen years ago the greatest YouTube video of all time, Wagon Attack 2, was released out into the world. I remember seeing this on the Grassroots Motorsports forum in between classes in college and falling head over heels in love with it, and everything it meant. Before I saw this video I hadn’t really discovered what I loved about cars, but after seeing it play out I learned that deep down I just wanted to use a car as a tool to achieve fun. A good car doesn’t sit in your garage for a sunny day, it gets up early and heads to a sand dune to jump around for a couple hours. Or an autocross, or a track day, skidpad, great driving road, whatever your flavor of fun is.
There’s so much more to cars than getting from A to B and I think Wagon Attack 2 taught me that. Press play to see what I mean.
For the record, there are Wagon Attacks 1 and 3, but like World Wars neither the former or the next quite live up to the promise of the second. Wagon Attack 1 is a one-minute video of snow donuts in a parking lot. Wagon Attack 3 has some good bits, and the cinematography and vistas are improved, but the stunts in Iceland aren’t better than they were in Michigan. I’ve linked both below for your own viewing and judgement. Enjoy both, then go back and watch 2 again and you’ll see what I mean.
