Ben has had his work featured on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, and many more. Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with millions of readers around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
When designing the Old Glory gloves the team at Spidi wanted to create a glove that could be worn by people who ride vintage and classically styled motorcycles without looking out of place. They also wanted the gloves to offer the best possible abrasion protection while maintaining industry leading sensitivity – many vintage motorcycles need…
This is the 1:10th scale Porsche 911 Carrera RSR R/C (remote control) car from Tamiya, it was carefully developed to closely match the now legendary styling of what is doubtless one of the most famous Porsches in history. 1973 was the year the 911 RSR was introduced as a homologation special to permit the car…
The De Tomaso P70, later known as the Ghia DeTomaso, was a joint project between two independent icons of the motoring world – Alejandro de Tomaso of Argentina and Carroll Shelby of the USA. The project was founded to develop a race car able to compete in and dominate the then-new United States Road Racing…
No Ghosts is a somewhat unusually named 1935 film about Chevrolet chassis design. The title of the film makes sense once you’ve seen it, but you have to watch through the first two minutes or so while the scene is set for the rest of the film. 1935 was a time when almost every motor…
Austrian race driver and engineer Wolfgang Denzel began building his own cars in the years shortly after WW2 using left over VW Kübelwagen chassis fitted with wood-framed bodies. By the late 1940s he was producing his own bespoke metal bodies using VW engines and running gear, oftentimes his vehicles would find themselves competing with rather…
This article was written by Per Gabos, the creator of this rather unusual pulsejet-powered motorcycle. The Weltmeister Fictional Experimental Motorcycle The Idea What if the Germans had built experimental pulsejet-powered motorcycles in the mid-1930s – how would these have been made and what would they have looked like? In the 1940s there were already…
The Matra Djet V (pronounced “jet”) and it’s forebear, the René Bonnet Djet, have the distinction of being the first full production car with a mid-engined layout, beating both the De Tomaso Vallelunga and the Lamborghini Miura to the punch. Though it should be pointed out that as with any automotive first, there is considerable…
This is an original Arova-Porsche 212 Skibob, just a few hundred were made by skibob manufacturer Arova in 1970 for Porsche, and they were specially designed to be able to fold down small enough to fit into the 911’s trunk. Skibobs were developed in the late 1960s as a new method of skiing, particularly for…
GRD Watches have made a name for themselves in recent years for their unusual, motor racing inspired timepieces that are based on speedometer and tachometer designs from classic sports cars. The company was started in Scotland in 2012 by Andrew E. Smith, it’s now based in Munich, Germany and it uses Swiss made Ronda…
The Jaguar Pirana was designed by Marcello Gandini at Bertone, it was built at a lightning pace just in time for the 1967 Earl’s Court Motor Show, a process that took just 5 months from initial blueprints to completed car. Interestingly it was built using the frame and running gear of a Jaguar E-Type 2+2,…
DOT testing requires that a helmet withstand two impacts on the same part of the helmet without failing, and they’re not permitted to convert more than a survivable amount of G-forces to the head within controlled laboratory conditions. Inside the BigBore helmet you’ll find an alcantara lining with removable cheek pads, there’s a padded chin…
The Ducati 999 was one of the most successful superbikes of its era in the Superbike World Championship – the model won the championship outright in 2003 (Neil Hodgson), 2004 (James Toseland), 2006 (Troy Bayliss), and it also won the 2005 BSB title (Gregorio Lavilla). The Ducati 999 The 999 had its work cut out…
