Articles that Ben has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, 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 well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
Ben Branch -
Honda CB500 by Steel Bent Customs
Michael Mundy is the owner of Steel Bent Customs based out of Oldsmar, Florida. His garage has a track record for building bikes that are the distillation of modern café racers, I know that term is over used nowadays but it used to refer to bikes that were bought as stock, stripped back as much as possible to save weight and then modified only in ways that would increase performance. Very much like this Honda CB500.
Fallout 3 Bike
Most guys spend their high school years chasing tail, unsuccessfully trying to buy beer and making every effort to look like Kurt Cobain. Lord knows I did. But that isn’t the path Chris Riffel chose for himself, this inspirational high schooler got a group of friends together, talked some teachers into helping and then set about building a fully functioning Fallout 3 bike, right down to the little radiation emblems on the front and rear.
Wallet & Chain by The Lowly Gentleman
This beautiful retro wallet and chain is made by The Lowly Gentlemen, based out of southern California. The wallet is cowhide with a suede interior and offset cream stitching whilst the cord is modelled on vintage hotrod electrical cables and comes with brass clips at either end.
SR400 by Skull Motorcycles
This SR400 by Skull Motorcycles out of Japan is one of those bikes that makes people sit forward and pay attention. The level of…
H. W. Libbey’s Electric Bicycle
With the surge in popularity of electric bicycles it’s interesting to note that they were first invented in the 19th century, a number of patents were filed around the same time with this one by H. W. Libbey being the closet approximation to the set up electric bicycles have today.
BioLite Camp Stove
The BioLite Camp Stove is one of those remarkable contraptions that once seen, must be owned. It’s a camp stove with a side mounted thermoelectric module that converts heat into electrical power, it uses this electricity to both power a small fan and power any USB connected electrical device.
Kevlar Jeans by Alpinestars
Wearing jeans on a motorcycle is totally fine, until you come off. Once you become separated from your motorcycle above asphalt, regular jeans offer very little protection, trust me on that, I’ve tried it.
Mele by DP Customs
The guys at DP Customs have a knack for creating hard-tail custom motorcycles that annihilate the stereotypes usually associated with the Harley based bobber/chopper genre and this bike is no exception. Meet the Mele.
Cacoon Hammock
The Cacoon is quite possibly the greatest hammock design ever conceived by the mind of man. Woven from a marine grade fabric the Cacoon comes in both 1 and 2 person variations and includes add-ons like mosquito netting, sheepskin liners and a number of other extras.
Volkswagen Type 2 – Cutaway
The Volkswagen Type 2, more commonly known as the “Kombi Van”, was first introduced by VW in 1950. The Type 1, better known as the “Beetle” was used as the chassis with some essential strengthening taking place to support the additional weight, the original prototypes had horrifically bad aerodynamics (0.75 DC) and so the Germans set about revising the design in the wind tunnel at the Technical University of Braunschweig.
Pursang by Radical Ducati
Pursang is the latest custom out of the Spanish motorcycle garage, Radical Ducati. Already famous for their focus on precision and engineering, Radical Ducati has built some of the more extreme Ducati customs we’ve seen in the past couple of years.
The Graf Zeppelin
The Graf Zeppelin was a hydrogen airship built by Germany over the years 1926, 1927 and 1928, the German’s had just finished building the USS Los Angeles Airship which had been given to the United States as war reparations, and now the they wanted one of their own.