What’s your first reaction when someone tells you they want to become a professional rally driver? It’s highly likely that you’ll probably just smile at them and say “oh, that’s nice!,” knowing how much effort, money, and time it takes in preparations to hit the dirt track in a professional manner. That was probably the reaction Jay Bullington from Saukville, about 30 minutes north of Milwaukee, got after announcing his plans to his friends.
Jay is the owner of JXB Performance, a company that designs and sells performance car parts. Most days he pretends he is working together with his two colleagues “when we're actually just spitballing ideas to make the race cars go faster or what the next crazy build will be.” It was probably one of those days when the idea of an Audi S6 prepared for ice racing came to mind. And the execution of the project is absolutely awesome.
Gallery: 2013 Audi S6 for ice racing
The car you see in the attached gallery started its life as a regular 2013 S6 with multiple owners before Jay decided to buy it. It even got its 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8 engine replaced at some point, and Jay told us this made it the “perfect candidate for a race car.” After several bolt-on power modifications, including performance intakes, exhaust, and fueling upgrades to support hybrid turbos, the fast sedan was quickly turned into a 650+ whp sleeper.
But, obviously, that was not the main mission. Jay wanted to build a new car for ice racing to replace his dying S4, and this black high-mileage S6 was perfect for the job. But he wanted to keep the speedy sedan in good shape and giving it tubular front-end protection quickly came to him as the best possible solution. He contacted a local cage-builder and decided to go for what he describes as an “OEM+” look for the front end - very angular fenders to make enough room for studded tires and an Audi-like honeycomb grille.
Overall, the entire custom front end weighs around 200 pounds (91 kilograms) and took the team working on the car about 200 hours to produce it. The result? “We've blasted through a number of snowbanks and there's hardly a scratch on the front end,” Jay told us. His original plan was to design the front end in a way that it can be swappable with the original body parts, but “it just came out way too awesome to consider taking it off after the season is over.”
What’s the next step for the Mad Max S6? “Maybe we'll do the same to the rear end, or start on an exoskeleton to go up over the roof rails to mount some more lights and our studded tires too, you know, because roof racks are cool, especially when you put cool tires on them,” Jay wrote us. We can't wait to see the next level.
