Jon Branch - Automotive Historian + Contributing Editor

Jon Branch has written countless official automobile Buying Guides for eBay Motors over the years, he’s also written for Hagerty, he’s a long time contributor to Silodrome and the official SSAA Magazine, and he’s the founder and senior editor of Revivaler. Jon has done radio, television, magazine, and newspaper interviews on various issues, and has traveled extensively, having lived in Britain, Australia, China, and Hong Kong. The fastest thing he’s ever driven was a Bolwell Nagari, the slowest was a Caterpillar D9, and the most challenging was a 1950’s MAN semi-trailer with unexpected brake failure.

A Brief History Of The Unusual Hercules W2000 Rotary-Engined Motorcycle

Fichtel & Sachs decided to call their first Wankel engine motorcycle the Hercules W2000 and they showed the prototype at the 1970 West Cologne Autumn Motorcycle Show: that prototype featuring a shaft drive and four speed gearbox from a BMW R27 that would not be used on the production model.

In the Beginning was a Porsche with an Audi Engine The immediate predecessor of the Porsche 944 was the Porsche 924 – a more affordable Porsche than the venerable 911 that sold well and helped keep Porsche in business throughout the 1970s and beyond. To understand the genesis of the Porsche 924 with its modified…

The story of the Africar is worthy of a Hollywood film, it involves millions of dollars, a Cambridge-educated engineering genius, a film crew, a global adventure, a wildly unusual automobile, and ultimately, a controversial prison sentence. Tony Howarth, and A Dream of a Car for Africa The Africar was the vision of Englishman Tony…

First There Was the “Blitz Buggy” and a War to Win The beginning of the Jeep CJ dates back to the origin of the “Jeep” itself, a story that began on 11th July 1940 when the US Department of War sent out an urgent request for a manufacturer to design and build a prototype quarter…

Introduction The Austin-Healey Sprite’s most famous and perhaps most endearing feature was its uncanny resemblance to Kermit the Frog: and in fact both the car and the puppet were created around the same time with Kermit making his first appearance in 1955 and the “Frogeye” Sprite entering production and making its first public appearance in…

The Chevrolet Corvair stands out as one of the most likely candidates for the title of “most controversial American car of the 1960s”. It may never have become quite so iconically controversial had it not been the subject of the first chapter of activist Ralph Nader’s book “Unsafe at Any Speed“, but back in…

Vincent Black Shadow Girdraulic forks motorcycle

In the Beginning there was Vincent HRD American author Hunter S. Thompson once said of Vincent’s world’s first “superbike”: “If you rode the Vincent Black Shadow at top speed for any length of time, you would almost certainly die. That is why there are not many life members of the Vincent Black Shadow Society.” The…

Bob Blair And A Desert Sled Called The P11 The idea for the motorcycle that would become the Norton P11 began in 1966 with Southern California Norton distributor Bob Blair who reasoned that if you took a Matchless G85 CS (Competition Scrambles) frame and squeezed a Norton Atlas 750cc parallel twin engine into it…

The Triumph Spitfire – An Introduction The paradoxical thing about the Triumph Spitfire is that it didn’t spit fire. The original Supermarine Spitfire fighter aircraft was powered by a huge supercharged Rolls-Royce V12 engine and was fitted with up to eight machine guns so that it truly did spit fire from engine exhausts and guns….

The Nissan Skyline GT-R – Godzilla When the name “Nissan Skyline” is mentioned it often brings another name to memory, that of Godzilla, a name given to the seemingly unbeatable 1989 Nissan Skyline GT-R in its 1990 racing guise, the NISMO GT-R, by the Australian motor press after its three consecutive Group A Championship wins…

The Mazda RX-3 – An Introduction The Mazda RX-3 “Savanna” was a paradox of a car. Fledgling Japanese car maker Mazda built a pretty typical for the period small passenger car and dropped a twin rotor Wankel engine into it. This had the effect of making the little RX-3 an exotic road rocket despite its…

The Mazda Cosmo – An Introduction The Mazda Cosmo was born in the midst of the maelstrom of the 1960’s, the era of the Space Race between the Soviet Union, the United States, Britain, and the other democratic allies. In a sense the two rival political, economic and social systems were in direct and not…

Jon Branch - Automotive Historian + Contributing Editor

A Brief History Of The Unusual Hercules W2000 Rotary-Engined Motorcycle

A Brief History of the Porsche 944 – Everything You Need To Know

The Incredible Story Of The Africar – The Wooden-Bodied Car For Africa

A Brief History of the Jeep CJ Series – Everything You Need To Know

A Brief History of the Austin-Healey Sprite – Everything You Need To Know

A Brief History of the Chevrolet Corvair – Everything You Need To Know

A Brief History of the Vincent Black Shadow – The World’s First Superbike

A Brief History of the Norton P11, P11A, and Ranger – Everything You Need To Know

A Brief History of the Triumph Spitfire – Everything You Need To Know

A Brief History of the Nissan Skyline and GT-R – Everything You Need To Know

A Brief History of the Mazda RX-3 – Everything You Need To Know

A Brief History of the Mazda Cosmo – Everything You Need To Know