Ken Block and Batmobile Designer Imagine Fox-body Hooner
‘Miami Vice’ and an all-white Lamborghini Countach inspired Ken Block’s vision for flared and louvered ‘Hoonifox’ concept.
Over the years, Ken Block and the Hoonigan Racing Division have performed Gymkhanas and other mind-blowing maneuvers in a variety of Ford vehicles. Those include the 914-horsepower, 1977 F-150-based “Hoonitruck” and the 600-horsepower Fiesta that starred in Gymkhana Three. Block has driven a couple of “Hoonicorn” Mustangs, too, but they aren’t anything like this wild Fox-body.
In one of his latest videos, Ken Block chats with Hoonigan Industries’ co-founder and chief creative officer Brian Scotto and graphic designer Ash Thorp (AKA the man responsible for the looks of the next Batmobile). Block’s vision of his next hooning machine, codenamed “Hoonifox”, was inspired by wildly different cars. He loves his previous Hoonicorn Mustangs, the most recent of which was an all-wheel-drive monster with a twin-turbo V8 that cranked out 1,400 horsepower and 1,250 lb-ft of Pikes Peak-climbing torque. “Going back to the … simple rawness of the beginning of the Hoonicorn and maybe even making it more simple and raw – that was kind of the general idea that I had in my head of what I wanted to do. And so the Fox-body came up as kind of the next obvious choice.”
Block loves the 1980s and he kept picturing a Fox-body with the rear window louvers. That led to him thinking about the show “Miami Vice” and the other major creative spark that led to the Hoonifox concept: a white-on-white Lamborghini Countach.
He turned to Thorp to help him make his unique idea into a reality – or at least a virtual reality, for now. Thorp started poring over images of Fox-bodies and race cars. It soon became clear to him that the Hoonifox needed to have a wide body, scoops and those ’80s-tastic louvers. Thorp went with a DTM-style wing for the rear end. He tells Block, “When we look at DTM racecars, we go like, ‘It’s full function.’ And the brutalness of the functionality is what makes it so awesome.”
Thorp started with preliminary mesh rough draft and then moved onto electronically drawing his initial design over the concept’s basic geometry using cars such as Ken’s previous Hoonicorn Mustang and even a Ferrari and Subaru as visual references. Digital wire frame mock ups that showed more details of the body and its geometry followed.
Once Thorp and Block finalized the Hoonifox’s design, they couldn’t just leave it blank. If Block is going to use it as a Gymkhana car, it’s going to eventually be covered in sponsor logos. Thorp took the livery from one of Block’s Hoonicorn Mustangs and laid it over the final rendering of his creation.
While he was at it, Thorp also configured it with an all-carbon exterior and a “crazy murdered-out” color scheme. And of course, Thorp made an all-white version for Block, which Thorp dubbed “Road Cocaine.”
The Hoonifox is just a bunch of pixels right now. Let’s hope it doesn’t stay that way because it’s a hell of a vented, flared and side-piped dream machine. It needs to be built and Block needs to drive it – in a pastel racing suit with both sleeves rolled up.
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