Photo: Steve Oom With just over 600 produced between 1954 and 1962 it can t be said that the Jensen...
Singer-songwriter Carol Connors once bet Carroll Shelby that if she wrote him a hit song, he’d give her a Cobra....
1912 Pope Hartford Model 27 The invention of the automobile probably had more to do with the invention of the bicycle than the invention of an electric motor, steam or internal combustion engine. The bicycle was the first speed-creating conveyance that was relatively easy to buy, use and maintain. On...
Henry Ford was truly one of a kind: egotistical yet compassionate; rich yet thrifty; genius yet ignorant. No man— industrialist,...
1931 AJS 9hp Richmond Saloon Mention AJS and most will think of motorcycles, but there was more to AJS than...
Photo: Steve Oom The next time you see an Audi on the road look closely at its badge. Four intertwined rings that probably remind the average person of the Olympic rings, but like most car badging there is a story behind the rings, which in the case of this German...
The names of the great marques roll off the tongue like poetry—Porsche, Jaguar, Maserati, Mercedes, Rolls-Royce and, of course, Ferrari....
Why an auto manufacture would choose a motto, “Le Juste Milieu,” that means “The Happy Mean,” will remain unanswered despite...
At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, much of the world quietly celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Armistice that ended “The War to End All Wars.” Total casualties, killed and wounded, numbered about 37 million. Of that number, approximately 17 million were killed – 7...
1964 Imperial Crown Coupe It was clear that this would be the start of something big just by opening the...
The spectacular Mercedes-Benz 540K represented the zenith of pre-war accomplishments by the Stuttgart-based firm in the pre-war era. It is...
A few miles north of Paso Robles we come up over a rise on a rolling two-lane road through Central California’s golden, hilly wine country and spot a 1937 Lincoln Zephyr coupe on a hill in the distance. It looks like a Brancusi sculpture. Its gleaming, dark merlot paintwork and its...
1949 Kurtis Sports Car [dropcap]F[/dropcap]rank Kurtis built racecars. He built many of the cars entered in the Indy 500 from...
At the Brits At The Beach car show in New Zealand recently, among the classic Jaguars, MGs, Triumphs and Morris...
Joe Conzonire eases his 1903 Packard Model F Runabout out of his shop and pulls it into the sunlight. It is as dazzling and intricate as a tsarist Russian Fabergé egg. I behold a symphony of polished brass, lacquered wood, tufted leather and Jules Vern Victorian machinery. Its regal, opulent,...
Prelude to Excellence There is a story that the Coventry car company name Alvis originated by taking “Al” from the...
When someone says “Sunbeam,” most car people immediately think of the “Tiger.” Sunbeam was much more than just that one...
1928 3-liter Invicta LC197 Many will know the Invicta story, one of the many projects spearheaded by Noel Macklin. Born in Australia, Macklin and his parents relocated to Wimbledon, England, during the early part of the 20th Century. The son of a wealthy barrister, Macklin was educated at the famous...
1956 Ford Fairlane Victoria I had seen, and worked on, a lot of mid-1950s Fords over the years, so I...
Photo: David Newhardt Photo: David Newhardt The year 1909 was an eventful period; the Indianapolis Motor Speedway opened, the first...
1930 Bentley Speed Six A bloke couldn’t think of anything more dissimilar if he tried. From a Boeing 737, to a modern Korean buzzbox, to a 1930 Bentley Speed Six. While both the jet and the Hyundai with its automatic transmission and power this-and-that were purely means of transport, the...
1983 Ferrari 512 BBi When word gets out that a particular car will be profiled, lots of comments, mostly unsolicited,...
National Motor Museum mechanics have discovered time capsule finds during the start of the restoration of Land Speed Record breaker...
“Bella figura” is Italian for “beautiful figure.” Winston Goodfellow uses the phrase in the title of the section of his book, “Ferrari – Road and Racing,” on the 250 GT/L, aka Berlinetta Lusso. Preston Lerner, in his book “Speed Read – Ferrari,” says about the 250 GT/L, “The reason it’s...
Chatting with Barry Alan Twitchell about his Porsche 993, he remembered that during a dinner in Switzerland, the owner of...
A frenzy of uncorked Mini Coopers, followed by a gaggle of vintage MGs, Triumphs and other assorted vintage sports racers...
1953 Glaspar G-2 Costa Mesa, California, was home to Glasspar, a company that built fiberglass boats in the late 1940s. With the launch of the Glasspar G-2, the company became the first and, for several years, the largest manufacturer of fiberglass automobiles—before the Kaiser Darrin or the Chevrolet Corvette were...
More Cylinders: Jessie Vincent and the Packard Twin Six engine “The greatest piece of machinery that ever went upon the...
The aristocracy of automobile marques in the days before the Great Depression was comprised almost exclusively of products from European...
Billed as “The Aristocrat of the Automobiles,” the vehicles produced by the Fabbrica Automobili Isotta Fraschini were owned by some of the most exclusive clientele ever boasted by one marque: movie stars like Clara Bow and Rudolph Valentino, athletes like Jack Dempsey, magnates like William Randolph Hearst and all manner...