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…
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…
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…
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…
Introduction: To Build a Better Jeep My first, and only, working experience with an Austin Champ was on a farm down in Australia where I was helping the property owner with some vermin control. We were racing across a sheep paddock doing at least 30 mph, although it felt like a lot more, in hot…
The Toyota Hilux pickup truck has become one of the most iconic vehicles to ever emerge from Japanese vehicle maker Toyota. The Hilux, known as the Pickup or Pickup Truck in the US market, has the distinction of having been to both North and South Poles and while on a North Pole journey for Top…
