The obituaries following the death of Ken Block in a snowmobiling crash in Utah last week merely hinted at the true richness of the life he led.
One English outlet described him as “a Top Gear star”. A business paper preferred “entrepreneur and co-founder of DC Shoes”.
Another website reckoned him best remembered as “a stunt driver”. Several places opted for “rallying legend” while the most graphic take was “purveyor of car porn”.
All of them were accurate in their own way but none were quite enough. The 55-year-old was all those things and a whole lot more.
To a devout constituency of boy and girl racers (a demographic that happily never grows up), drifting obsessives in T-shirts bearing slogans like Hoonigan and Tire Slayer, his death was as keenly felt as Pelé’s across the soccer world.
Perhaps even more so because Block became famous in the social media age and those mourning him, unlike many of us lamenting the passing of the Brazilian icon, had seen footage of every breathtaking driving stunt, each episode of reckless endangerment, and the various mindless capers the California native pulled off in different vehicles over the past two decades.
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From racing a souped-up Ford Fiesta around a track against Lewis Hamilton in his Formula One Mercedes, to cornering at the Donegal International Rally, to shutting down San Francisco’s Bay Bridge for YouTube shenanigans, his highlights reel is extensive, ridiculous, and cherished.
Petrol heads divide the world into those who associate gymkhana with plummy equestrian carry-on and those for whom that name reeks of exhaust fumes, burning rubber, and Block’s regular feats of automotive derring-do. There was no point to much of what he did behind the wheel of a car. Which was the fun of all of it. The reason a clip might get 500 million views.
He is survived by his wife, three children, and the word hooning, his contribution to the vernacular, coined to best encapsulate his gleeful antics; burnouts while chained in place in an LA parking garage, etching doughnuts into the asphalt of the Vegas Strip or drifting perilously up the unprotected corners of Pikes Peak in Colorado.
One minute, he was tooling around London streets, the next sliding along the frozen tundra of Sweden’s Lule river, or anywhere else he and Brian Scotto (his creative partner in crime) figured they might capture dramatic shots of him threatening the limits of speed and chicanery.
“If you’re not scared,” said Block once, “you’re not going fast enough.”
The gymkhana brand under which so much of that footage was unleashed upon the world was lucrative and will endure, yet was only one entry on an overstuffed resume.
An enthusiastic amateur skateboarder and snowboarder (the passion he once hoped might yield him a living), he started DC Shoes with Damon Way in 1994 when they realised no existing manufacturer was creating footwear tough enough to endure the wear and tear of the street sport.
With simple fixes like adding nylon loops to protect laces from abrasion, they enlisted pros to help with innovative design as well as promotion of the product, and, after a decade, sold the company for over $100 million.
“The most fascinating part of Ken’s story,” said Rob Dyrdek, his close friend and one of the skaters involved in the embryonic DC Shoes, “is that he was truly the only person in the history of sports to build and sell a company that promoted the world’s best athletes, and then became a superstar athlete in his own right.”
With generational wealth in the bank, Block watched his buddy Travis Pastrana drive a rally car and decided, at 37, to spend a small fortune learning the sport at Team O’Neal’s Driving School.
The whimsical indulgence of a newly minted plutocrat? Or the boy inside the near enough middle-aged man chasing a far-flung dream? Definitely more of the latter.
As witnessed by anybody who ever saw how relentlessly he applied himself, whether competing against the very best in the world Rally Championship or garnering podium finishes in world Rally Cross, corners of the motoring world barely noticed in America. To push himself at that age in so unforgiving an arena said much about his approach.
“He was a rich gentleman racer, but he didn’t act like it, and he certainly didn’t hang out with other rich gentleman racers,” wrote Matt Farah on Road andtrack.com.
“He hung out with flat bill drifters in Long Beach and Compton, on a thankless, fanless rally stage in the woods, or in remote snowy lodges on the side of mountains with a board strapped to his feet and a GoPro on his chest. He created celebrities out of people who just wanted to do dumb shit in their cars, and led the most successful automotive lifestyle clothing brand of the last 20 years.”
His driving talent was always matched by marketing genius, the ability to tap into the zeitgeist of a global subculture. Witness him shredding doughnuts around a juggling Neymar Jr in a bit called footkhana. No need for it at all. Yet watched and enjoyed by hundreds of million people. Repeatedly.
According to Block’s website, a hoonigan is defined as “a person who operates a motor vehicle in an aggressive and unorthodox manner, consisting of, but not limited to, drifting, burnouts, doughnuts, as well as acts of automotive aeronautics. One who hoons.”
The original of that species.
