Dave Cole doesn’t like shoes. Coming down the stairs from the second story of a massive steel and concrete warehouse that he calls home, his lack of footwear was the first thing I noticed. The room is filled with four-wheel machines that fulfill every obsession.
There’s a 1969 Chevy Malibu SS under a tarp, a weathered rock crawler, an old Jeep CJ5, a Class 11 Volkswagen that’s slowly being assembled by kids from the local high school’s automotive elective, a 4400 race truck, and nearly a dozen side-by-sides.
Dave is the founder of King of the Hammers, a weeklong off-road racing event that’s intended to test both driver and machine against the brutal terrain that surrounds his warehouse in Johnson Valley. It’s been described as the Burning Man for off-road enthusiasts, and after attending KOH a handful of times, I can attest the analogy is not only correct, but that Hammers is a spectacle every off-road racing fan should witness once in their life.
