Do you have an army of haters that make your commute a headache? Do you wish that you could drive through basically anything? Well, Hemmings Auctions might have just what you need as a 2020 Howe & Howe Ripsaw EV3-F4 luxury super tank is up for grabs.
Yes, you read that bit right, I said “luxury super tank.” The folks at Howe & Howe spend much of their time engineering some pretty gnarly vehicles meant for the military. But it also makes civilian versions of these vehicles, like this 800 horsepower turbodiesel V8 beast.
The Ripsaw story begins with brothers Mike and Geoff Howe. As their site explains, the two like tinkering with machines. After trying to blow up a stove as kids and turning a school bus into a mobile concert stage, the pair got into off-roaders. In 2001, they built the first Ripsaw and things sort of just snowballed from there. The Howes would build tracked vehicles in all shapes and sizes looking for a military contracts.
Finally, in 2014 the team would release the Ripsaw EV2 into the wild. That wild machine generated such enough buzz that the Ripsaw would begin showing up in movies like G.I. Joe: Retaliation and later Ripsaw versions in Mad Max: Fury Road and the Fate Of The Furious.
This Ripsaw EV3-F4 is one of the latest civilian Ripsaws and it has some mind-boggling specs.
Situated behind the cab is a Duramax 6.6-liter turbodiesel V8 making 800 HP and 1,500 lb-ft torque. That goes through an Allison 1000 transmission and moves the 10,000 pound beast to speeds of 60 mph. Howe & Howe claims it is the world’s fastest dual-track vehicle. It also has a 64 gallon tank so it can go for a long distance. These specs match those quoted elsewhere, like in Diesel World.
It travels on polyurethane tracks and the cabin is said to have 20 inches of ground clearance.
This Ripsaw carries four occupants who hop in through gullwing doors and sit in heated and cooled Recaro leather seats.
The driver controls the tank using a yoke, which is connected to a drive-by-wire system. In previous Ripsaws, the steering wheel would steer the tank through the use of hydraulic clutches, which would slow one set of tracks down. It’s unclear if that same system is in place here but regardless, check out those inboard brakes!
The driver’s command center features digital gauges that can be used with night vision goggles, an infrared light bar and FLIR camera.
You also get tons of storage, a giant winch and a tubular steel exoskeleton. Howe & Howe also offered heated steering wheels, heated windshields and air-conditioning as options for Ripsaws, but it’s unclear if they’re present here.
The seller claims that this is one of six of these built in this configuration. Howe & Howe says that it only builds a handful of these a year, so it’s possible that the claim is right. It also has only 98 miles on its odometer, too!
The price for one of these new is $500,000, notes Interesting Engineering, and that doesn’t include any customizations that you may ask the Howe & Howe team to do. This one is currently sitting at $130,000 with 10 days to go on Hemmings Auctions. The buyer gets a title, but I’m not sure if this is road legal anywhere. The reserve isn’t met yet, but I’m willing to bet that it’s going to be very expensive.
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