Watch Jeff Gordon give an auto blogger the terrifying ride of his life

About a year ago, the marketing geniuses of Pepsi MAX came up with the idea of having NASCAR star Jeff Gordon disguise himself as a milquetoast tire-kicker and shoot a video with him taking a used-car salesman on a high-speed joyride in a Camaro. It was a good notion, but the setup was a bit too transparent — the more you thought about it, the more staged it seemed. (C'mon, cupholder camera?)

So the marketers reconsidered, with Gordon himself. What if they could pull the same stunt, but this time on someone who had no idea it was coming? A mark who would offer an authentic reaction, yet not pursue charges for getting tossed around like wet laundry — like, perhaps, one of the Jalopnik writers who made the most noise about the first video?

The result? Proof that Jeff Gordon knows how to scare the Pepsi MAX out of someone for real — although Gordon told Yahoo Autos he was almost as nervous as his passenger.

After the success of the first video, Gordon says Pepsi's ad team started talking about how to do something bigger and better. The result took months of planning with dozens of contributors, scouting locations and coming up with a realistic story that wouldn't give away Gordon's identity.

The target of this elaborate prank was Travis Okulski, Jalopnik's deputy editor. The new mission began with a new costume for Gordon, a more hard-bitten look featuring stubble and fake neck tattoos. The former editor of Jalopnik, Ray Wert, now works in advertising and served as set-up man, crafting a just-believable cover story: Okulski thought he was flying to North Carolina to get a sneak early drive of the Chevy Corvette Z06.

"I had no reason to believe anything was amiss," Okulski said. "Everything made sense, and I don't really go through life expecting that people are actively trying to fool me."