What do you get when you combine LeMons, dirt track racing, and demolition derby? Bilcross, is what. It’s a Swedish motorsport often called folk racing and it’s incredible.
From what I understand, amateur racers come together for these events all over Scandinavia and northern Europe, with each country running their own version with minor variations. The concept likely originated in Finland, where they call it Jokamiesluokka.
The video I’ve found is an end-of-season round-up of highlights from racing at Jönköping in Sweden and it’s fascinating for a few reasons. First, the racing seems to exclusively take place in the mud. For a rally lover like me, that’s more than enough, but the real draw here is the sheer variety of cars competing.
The most common model unsurprisingly appears to be the Volvo 240, but I see plenty of others, from Saab 99s to E36 Compacts on the track. Watching all of these cars, big and small, front- and rear-wheel-drive, struggle with the slippery surface with little regard for collision avoidance is a ton of fun and I’d love to be able to make it to one of these races someday, even if the result seems a little less than safe.