This week’s throwback takes us back 9 years ago, where “gymkhana” wasn’t a common word to be heard until one video changed everything.  Chances are if you’re reading this, I’m sure you’ve heard of Ken Block.  Whether you’re a die hard stage-rally fanatic, YouTube fanboy, or have participated in some sort of “action sport,” Ken Block’s name gets around.  His world-famous Gymkhana YouTube videos are probably the reason why most people know who he is and what he does.  I found out about him by seeing an “eye-catching” Monster Energy/DC t-shirt in the skateboard catalog CCS, which I regularly got since I was into skateboarding at the time.  I googled “43 Block Monster Energy,” thinking it was some cool skateboarder with the number meaning left unknown, but I was wrong.  The first video I saw show up on Google was this one: “DC Shoes: Ken Block Gymkhana Practice” by Ken Block Racing.  I clicked the video and couldn’t believe what I was watching!  I was already a fan of Subarus but wasn’t knowledgable at all about them.  I just knew they came in blue and sounded really cool.  After watching the video I watched it again, and again.  The sound, the intensity, the driving, and just about everything in the video made me realize what Subarus were all about – having fun.



 

I couldn’t get over that first scene of him launching the car and sliding it so far at such a high speed and with great angle – probably still one of my favorite clips.  I knew about Formula Drift, which was starting to get a little more popular, but Gymkhana intrigued me so much more with it’s freestyle-like drifting, which greatly appealed to me.

I watched that video dozens of times throughout the years while it was still being circulated around the internet.  Ken Block was definitely one of my biggest inspirations for getting into Subarus – sounds cheesy, I know.  Back in the day I was a Ken Block fanboy.  As funny and tacky as it sounds, its totally true.  I still look up to Ken Block and what he’s doing in the world of business and driving.  I’m not afraid to admit that, even though Ethan and CJ make fun of me for it all the time.  There are now 9 Gymkhana videos total, and the recently announced 10th one is coming soon.  It’s incredible that the videos are still so popular and how he’s been able to further his career just from that.



I still love all of the videos, some more than others though.  I would still say the very first one is my all-time favorite.  No huge camera crews with helicopters and million-dollar supercars he’s sliding around.  It was a very grassroots-like style that I appreciate then and even more so now, with an astonishing 15 million views on YouTube.

I’m not saying the new videos are bad, but it wasn’t about the production and marketing.  It was all about the driving.  Even video games like DiRT and Forza Motorsport included Ken Block’s Gymkhana cars because kids like myself wanted to be just like him.  I figured this would be a pretty relevant throwback article to those mid-to-late ‘90s kids who grew up playing Gran-Turismo on PS2 and watching Rob Dyrdek’s Fantasy Factory.  These Gymkhana videos truly had a huge impact in the car community as a whole.  Ask someone at a car meet about Ken Block or Gymkhana, and that will probably spark a whole conversation talking about one of his videos.

By Zach Osborne – @momentum.rs

 

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