There is desert off-road racing like you see in Baja that the sanctioning body SCORE International puts on, and there is short-course off-road racing such as the Lucas Oil Off-Road Racing Series (LOORS) or the The Off-Road Championship (TORC) Series. Then there is rock bouncing/racing competitons like those held down in the southeastern parts of the country by the Southern Rock Racing Series (SRRS), and there is mud racing and sand dragging going on almost everywhere in the country from central California to southern Maine.

There are off-road motorsport events being carried on all over this country every weekend, but we had never seen anything like King of The Hammers, until we attended the event during its infancy in 2007. Specially designed rock/crawling/racing machines that were half-buggy-half-truck were racing at speeds over huge boulders and across treacherous desert terrain that vehicles from other off-road disciplines could simply not have handled; and during the subsequent years, the vehicles have become even more specialized, powerful and capable.

King of The Hammers has evolved from 12 teams racing for bragging rights, to more than 300 teams competing before more than 35,000 fans in person and nearly 500,000 watching online. The massive event takes place each year in February, on public lands in Johnson Valley, California.

Now there are motorcycles, UTVs and specialized race cars of many different classes, including a new spec class with Hemi V8 engines, running in the event. And due to the event’s incredible success, the organization that runs it, Hammerking Productions, created an Ultra4 Racing Series with seven races held throughout the country. Each of these races is a qualifier for the annual King of The Hammers race.

If you have never witnessed King of The Hammers, or even if you have, the “>trailer video above is a must see, and it will surely entice you to buy a copy of the full-length film in the form of a DVD. We saw the full-length feature at a private screening, and can attest to the strikingly beautiful and well-made film that you will see when you purchase the DVD 2013 King of The Hammers Vindication.

We won’t spoil it for you, but we will tell you that it’s the best King of the Hammers film made so far, and worth every penny. There were times when the audience was rising from their seats with excitement, and times when they were rolling with laughter at some of the in-car audio.