Enter for Your Chance to Win by October 2, 2012

If you’ve ever been to a Pep Boys auto parts store, you’ve seen the logo with the three caricatures of “Manny, Moe, and Jack.” What you might not know is that not only were Manny, Moe, and Jack real people, the founders of Pep Boys back in 1921, but there was a fourth partner, also named Moe, who cashed out early on. But what you really need to know about Pep Boys today is that it’s teaming up with Valvoline NextGen motor oil to send a lucky sweepstakes winner and a guest on a VIP trip to the Automobile Club of Southern California’s NHRA Finals in Pomona, California, November 10-11.

The single Grand Prize winner will be announced on October 12, and will receive airfare, accommodations, and tickets for two to the NHRA Finals at Auto Club Raceway. The winner will also receive $200 in cash, a Valvoline TracPack, one-day access to the Don Schumacher Racing hospitality area, a meet-and-greet with the team’s driver, Don Schumacher, and much more. More...

Remember those arguments you used to have with your friends over pointless and unsolvable questions like whether Batman was tougher than Superman? Did you ever square off over whether an electric skateboard can beat a Corvette? Probably not, but in case the subject ever comes up, here’s a video of just such a race. Note that the secret to winning anything is to be the one who makes the rules.

There’s no denying race drivers are athletes, and every four years there’s a faint but discernible cry to include some form of motorsports in the Olympics. Here’s Tony Stewart throwing his hat in the ring—and at Matt Kenseth—for a shot at the captaincy of the 2016 United States Helmet Toss Team.

People always talk about how dangerous racing is, but they're usually referring to the driver. In fact, racing is dangerous for just about everyone involved in it, as this video of Ralf Schumacher making a pit stop during practice for the Zandvoort round of the DTM series demonstrates. As he rocketed out of his own pit, his car caught an air line on the adjacent pit that sent four pit crewmen tumbling and to the hospital. Fortunately, all are reportedly not seriously injured.

You’d think with the world’s finest athletes all gathered together in London to celebrate the pinnacle of human ability, someone would just walk out there and bring back the javelins, discuses (discii?), hammers, and shots the competitors fling downfield in their quest for gold. Instead, along with a fleet of 160 BMW ActiveE models and 40 MINI Es used to shuttle athletes and officials around, three radio-controlled Mini MINIs have been deployed to fetch throwable sports gear so officials don’t have to get up and, you know, do anything.

The quarter-scale MINIs have 10-horsepower motors, vented disc brakes, and beefed-up suspension to carry the heavy stuff. The sunroof opens up to reveal a waterproof storage area that also has holders for javelins. Each car is good for about 35 minutes of running on a charge, and each of the three Mini MINIs covers almost four miles per day in four-hour shifts across nine days of Olympic and nine days of Paralympic competition.

But maybe there’s a more subtle plan at work here. There are no motorsports at the Olympics, but as the youth of the world are seduced in ever greater numbers away from outdoor games and toward computer games, perhaps RC car racing is the Olympic sport of the future. If so, look for Team BMW to earn the first gold.

Today, if you think of a car with two seats, no roll-up windows or outside door handles, and a fiberglass body, odds are you’re picturing a dune buggy. Sixty years ago, however, a car fitting that description rolled off the GM assembly line in Flint, Michigan. Even though doubters gave it little chance of succeeding, that car—the first Chevrolet Corvette—was the iconic ancestor of a legendary line of high-performance American sports cars.

Throughout its history the Corvette has offered state-of-the-art features, designs, technologies and performance, but Tadge Juechter, vehicle chief engineer for Corvette, says what made the Corvette such an enduring concept is simple: driving one.

“No matter what your station in life, when you’re behind the wheel of a Corvette, you’re an Olympic athlete—able to go faster, stop quicker, and turn better than everyone else,” he says. “Very few cars can match that experience. And no other car has delivered that experience as well, or to more people, than the Corvette.”

Originally code-named the XP-122, the car that would become the Corvette debuted at the GM Motorama show in the ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City in January of 1953. Its popularity with show-goers prompted Chevy to put it into limited production, but the initial run of 150 units doubled to 300 in its first year, and the next year the Corvette moved to a GM assembly facility in St. Louis, Missouri, where 3,640 Corvettes were built for the 1954 model year. Since then more than 1.5 million Corvettes have been built.

From the beginning the Corvette wasn’t a family car, but one that promised a driver and a passenger all the thrills of the open road. Now, at 60 years young, it’s the head of a family of legendary American sports cars.

For most of its 100-year history, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway has been a hotbed of innovation. Cars with four wheels and six wheels, cars with the engine in the front and rear, four-, six-, and eight-cylinder engines, turbochargers and superchargers—just about every type of racecar has lapped the famed oval at one time or another.

But there’s never been a rotary-engined car competing at the Brickyard—until now, when the SpeedSource Dempsey Racing and Team Sahlen Mazda RX-8 Grand-Am GT car hits the bricks for another IMS milestone, the first sports car race on the world’s most famous track.

Mazda, which has racked up wins at other legendary tracks including at Le Mans, Daytona, Sebring, and Spa, hopes to add Indy to its win list. Mazda was the 2010 Grand-Am GT Manufacturers Champion, and after eight of 13 races in this year’s Grand-Am GT Championship is ranked third among eight manufacturers, while Mazda drivers Sylvain Tremblay and Jonathan Bomarito are fourth in driver points, having scored one win earlier this season. Mazda racer Wayne Nonnamaker is ranked second among the Pro-Am drivers competing for the Bob Akin Cup.

Mazda has yet another first up its sleeve for the 2013 season. That’s when the Mazda SKYACTIV-D clean diesel engine will debut in the new Grand-Am GX class. This will be the first modern diesel to race at Indy, and the first diesel of any type to race there in over 50 years.