Driving with "Gymkhana Two Project" Star Ken Block

Chances are you may have heard of him, maybe even worn his clothing, shoes, or other hipster action sports goodies. But what you may not know about DC Shoes founder Ken Block is that he's also a rally racing champ who has achieved YouTube fame for his driving and sliding video entitled "Gymkhana Practice."

Since its debut last year, DC's PR personnel say the video has attracted at least 20 million pairs of eyeballs from around the world and has most recently inspired another rubber-vaporizing video called "Gymkhana Two Project: The Informercial."

For the uninitiated, gymkhana, which Block refers to as "motorsport's eye candy," is a driving discipline that takes place in a field or open parking lot and tests a driver's car control around a series of cones, slaloms, 180-degree turns, 360-degree turns, figure-eight turns, or other obstacles using extreme acceleration, braking and drifting.'" So says KenBlockRacing.com.

The backdrop for "Gymkhana Practice" was Southern California's extinct El Toro Air Force base. But for the latest video, Block and crew instead chose to evade large trans-oceanic containers, shipping cranes, two-foot-diameter pipes, and whatever else was lying around L.A.'s tightly packed shipping docks in Long Beach -- all at speeds of up to 100 mph.

DC Shoes, along with Subaru America, recently gave us a chance to preview Block's upcoming "Gymkhana Two Project" in sunny SoCal. The flick features stunts you've likely never seen and unbelievable car control set against bleak-but-beautiful industrial-grade scenery fit for the unique pastime. As you might expect, the finished video is pretty insane -- in nothing but the sickest ways possible.

"It's only 80 percent done," Block told us during the media preview for the new video. "We just shot a new opening scene with longer slides and more tricks today." It has since been chopped and put back together in time for the world premiere, which dropped on Monday, June 1.

Given the viral success Block had with "Gymkhana Practice," DC, along with sponsors Monster and BFGoodrich Tires, made sure a bigger, better video (in terms of budget, camera angles, staff, and stunts) succeeded it. The first was a fun video trial put together by his team to get his and DC's names out into the world, Block says.

"Gymkhana Two," he explains, is a straight-up, no questions asked infomercial with wicked driving at its core. The video is meant to promote the brand's new Rally TeamWorks Collection celebrating Block's rallying successes since entering sport back in 2005.

To drive home the point that the video has commercial intentions, DC added the infomercial subtitle. But make no mistake, this is no ordinary late-night TV spot featuring some chamois-wielding pitchman. "(Versus regular infomercials) we tried to do it with dynamic imagery and entertaining action," Block says. "We tried to do it the best we could."