Charles B. Franklin: the Engineer with Practical Experience Charles Bayly Franklin, the engineer who was to create three of the most iconic Indian motorcycles, was born in the Irish City of Dublin on October 13,…
Above Image: A Lotus 7 battling with a Porsche 356 Speedster in 1984. Image courtesy of the San Francisco Region SCCA. In the Beginning: Motorsport in the Mud Lotus Cars, and thus the Lotus 7,…
Marcos Cars: Wooden Wonders In the wake of the Second World War, as Britain worked her way through austerity and the process of rebuilding what had been destroyed or damaged by the not at all…
A Gas Turbine or a V8? The story of the development of the Rover V8 engine begins with a dream that became a failed dream. Once upon a time in England’s green and pleasant land…
The MGC – A Sports Car in Search of an Engine The story of the MGC is fraught with “what could have been…” possibilities. For all its good and not so desirable points the MGC…
Toyota’s Station Wagon Land Cruisers: From the J40 is born the Rare Toyota FJ45V The story of the Toyota J60 began with Toyota’s tentative experimentation with making a station wagon version of their existing J40…
Carroll Shelby And His Famous Nitro Glycerine Tablets Carroll Shelby was named after a Christian minister and went from being a child with a heart condition that prevented him from doing some of the things…
The Norton 16H – A Roaring Norton for the Roaring Twenties The Norton Model 16H had its beginnings back even before the Roaring Twenties, and before the outbreak of the First World War. The 490cc…
In the Beginning: Giugiaro and a Boomerang The story of the Lotus Esprit began, not just in the minds of the design team at Lotus, but in the mind of a man who has been…
The story of the Toyota Land Cruiser J Series (FJ40 / BJ40 etc) starts in the Philippines during the Second World War, the Japanese had invaded the nation, along which much of the rest of…
A Motorcycle Superior to All Others George Brough was a man who had a love of motorcycles and a social intelligence that enabled him to put his finger on the pulse of what would be…
Val Page, Ariel, and the Red Hunter The story of the Ariel Red Hunter began when motorcycle engineer Val Page joined Ariel in 1925, having previously served his apprenticeship with the renowned British engine maker…
