I wonder how they opened up the whole city for this....

I wonder when exactly they did it. Maybe they did it over a couple of days in the early morning?

It was shot over four days in May: http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/11/ken-block-on-the-making-of-gymkhana-5/

As Casey points out below, it cost them $200k to close the streets.

It's an intermixing of real driving and footage with fake San Francisco Rush footage (I'm guessing). That or there's a sanctioned rally car race nobody's heard about.

BTW, my friend was the visual effects supervisor for I Am Legend. He told me about all the stuff they had to do to take out all the people from all the shots they did in NYC.

BTW, if it is live, you can see the tire marks from the previous runs, so it wasn't one take!

It definitely wasn't one take.

This is the fifth time these hoonigans have done something like this: http://espn.go.com/action/global_rallycross_championship/2012/story/_/id/8196881/ken-block-discusses-gymkhana-5-video-games

I just rewatched the video and appears to have been early morning after all. I know they still need permits but I just read the cracked article that mentions how London appearing empty in 28 days later was CGI free: http://www.cracked.com/article_19872_6-mind-blowing-special-effects-you-wont-believe-arent-cgi_p2.html and I think it's an interesting idea.

I just read the two other articles on that site too: 7 images too badass to be real, but they are; True stories behind 5 famous photos.

Cool site and cool link to the CGI free stuff. I'm going to have to try the pen trick with my kids.

I love this: "They could basically just point at Murphy from different angles as he walked through London at the wee hours of the morning, when crowds were limited to workaholics going to work and alcoholics stumbling home."

Pen trick?