Many of us have the dream: buy a cheap old unlikely car, race it against teams with much bigger budgets, and win big. Summon your inner Caswell, your inner Holland. Then reality sets in and you think it’s actually impossible, so why try? But this year on Mount Washington, Alexander Grabau did what some would consider impossible.


It’s a couple days before Christmas, and let’s face it: you aren’t really working. So now’s a great time to tune in to the underdog story of how Grabau took an imported, right-hand drive 1994 Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution II—dubbed the Pleasure Evo, because it was so bad to drive—and on some of the the top rally drivers at the Climb to the Clouds.

Grabau ran in the same class as the factory backed Subarus and other cars, and he considered drivers like Travis Pastrana and David Higgins to be untouchable. While Grabau had been doing hillclimbs for more than a decade, overall his in-car experience was far less than that of the pros.


And yet the result was an amazing one for the Pleasure Evo: second place, the top finishing car in the unlimited class behind Pastrana in the factory Subaru car.

His buddy Nick was there to catch it on video, so if you feel like a David vs. Goliath rally story, you should watch it all.