Articles that Ben Branch 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 -
Kawasaki KZ400
Discovered via WideOpenMoto this Kawasaki KZ400 has had the off-road treatment applied front to back, the chunky off road tires, stripped back frame and nicely tidied up rear end give the bike an appealing, post-apolocalypic feel with the distressed tank and engine rounding out the theme quite nicely.
Hammer Screwdriver Combination Tool
The Hammer Screwdriver Combination Tool is one of those things we all need around the house, it includes a hammer, claw, 2 phillips and 2 flat-head screw drivers that all screw into the handle when not being used.
Gilles Villeneuve
It isn’t widely known that Gilles Villeneuve started his motorsport career racing snowmobiles in his native Quebec. It’s hard to imagine a racing series further removed from Formula 1 than this but somehow he took his talent from these humble beginnings to win the US and Canadian Formula Atlantic championships in 1976.
Yamaha RD400 Cafe Racer
Cafe Racer TV approached both Lossa Engineering and Garage Company before filming season 2 and asked the well-known custom bike builders to collaborate on…
Hawley Jacket by Perfecto
The Schott NYC brand has been around seemingly forever, their most recent line is called “Perfecto” having been named after their most famous jacket design.
Jud Turner – Factorum
Jud Turner is an artist known for groundbreaking sculptures that often use mechanical elements to create biological forms, this sculpture is called “Factorum” and is a slightly unusual example from the artist.
1959 Troy Roadster
The 1959 Troy Roadster is a one off, road legal race car designed and built by Wally Troy in 1959. Wally was the first Jaguar dealer licensed in Illinois but his real passion was racing and his great dream was to design and build a road legal race car that could rub shoulders with the Formula 1 cars of the era.
Japanese Retro Futurism
I love retro futurism, the Japanese seem to produce some of the best you’ll find anywhere, as any fan of Akira or Ghost in the Shell will tell you.
Marlon Brando
Possibly the most iconic rough-round-the-edges actor of the mid-20th century, he went on to make the Schott Perfecto jacket an icon in it’s own right.
Fifty Years of Kicks – Motorcycle Documentary
I love a good documentary, especially when it’s about motorcycles and it was made by friends. This fantastic 20 minute film follows the story of Paul Rodden and Larry Murray, two slightly older off-road motorcyclists who regularly go out on the trails with much younger men, and literally leave them in the dust.
Fiona Volpe – Thunderball
Thunderball is one of the better Bond films, the financials agree with me on this as well. It earned $141 million at the box office and if you adjust for inflation, it’s still the highest grossing Bond film ever released.
Kyrgyz by Kraus Motor Co.
Kyrgyz by the The Kraus Motor Co. is the kind of motorcycle I’d love to see the US chopper scene producing a lot more of, it’s a fascinating combination of modern and vintage technology with serious emphasis placed on engineering.