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 Mazda RX-7 – Everything You Need To Know

The Mazda RX-7 – An Introduction The Mazda RX-7 was the result of Toyo Kogyo Corporation’s high risk strategy of embracing the new and unproved Wankel engine technology with which to carve out a profile for themselves as a new technology innovator. Three automobile makers attempted this, NSU of Germany, Citroën of France, and Mazda…

The Chevrolet Suburban – Practical Becomes Popular In thinking about the Chevrolet Suburban it might be best to start with the things we aspire to when we are young, and how that changes when we are old. You’ve possibly heard of a song from the 1960’s called “When I was Young” by The Animals in…

Project Utah – The Jaguar Mk I The story of the Jaguar Mark II (also known as the Jaguar MK2) begins with Jaguar’s “Project Utah” which gave birth to the Jaguar 2.4 liter and 3.4 liter Mark I. These models then went on to father the Jaguar Mark II and then the Daimler 2.5 V8…

The MGA – An Introduction + Background The MGA was born out of two strands of activity; one was the American’s discovery of British sports cars in the years after the Second World War with the car responsible for that being the MG TC of 1945-1950. The second was MG’s quest to be recognized as…

A Farm Cart And The Citroën 2CV Legend has it that the germ of the idea that would become the Citroën 2CV was sown in the mind of the Vice-President and Chief of Engineering and Design of Citroën, Pierre-Jules Boulanger, one rainy afternoon when as he drove along a narrow French lane he found himself…

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…

Jon Branch - Automotive Historian + Contributing Editor

A Brief History of the Mazda RX-7 – Everything You Need To Know

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

A Brief History of the Jaguar Mark II – The British Bank Robber’s Favourite Getaway Car

A Brief History of the MGA – Everything You Need To Know

A Brief History of the Citroën 2CV – Everything You Need To Know

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