The idea of taking an aircraft engine capable of over 1000 hp and bolting it into the front of a hydroplane is clearly insane. But in the interwar years in Europe, the battles taking place on the water to set new records and win races had very few restrictions – particularly in the aptly named…
The Amphicar is a 100% amphibious car built by the Germans in the 1960s, and lovingly described by their owners as “the fastest car on the water and the fastest boat on the road”. This joke is a reference to the somewhat stately 7 mph top speed on water and 70 mph top speed on…
When the McLaren Racing Formula 1 Team blew this engine during a test session in the mid-70s there are few who would have believed it would be offered for sale in Paris over 40 years later as a €1,500+ coffee table and wine rack. Before its explosive demise, the Ford DFV 919 V8 F1 engine…
The Vincent V-Twin The Vincent Rapide was the first motorcycle from the Stevenage-based motorcycle manufacturer to be fitted with their new V-twin. This engine is considered by many motorcycle historians to be one of the most beautiful twins of all time, and funnily enough it only came to be because of a coincidence on the…
Von Dutch, aka Kenny Howard, was a prolific artist and self-taught engineer, and a founding father of the Californian Kustom Kulture movement of ’50s and ’60s.
Meet Galaxy Custom Galaxy Custom is a Bulgarian custom motorcycle garage, interestingly it lives inside a workshop that builds bespoke high-end furniture – this means they have the skills, personnel, and equipment on hand to build just about any bike they can dream of. Their previous builds have included a couple of BMWs – including a…
The L’Avventura by Walt Siegl Motorcycles is a new low-volume production bike, designed from the ground up to be highly competent both on and off the asphalt. With a kerb weight of 345 lbs, a tuned 1100cc Ducati L-twin, and state-of-the-art suspension, the L’Avventura is more than capable of wiping the floor with many high-end production…
The mid-engined Cooper-Climax Bobtail was an early part of a major global motorsport revolution. Its mid-engined layout combined with a space frame chassis and lightweight alloy body would form a template that would be copied far and wide – eventually becoming the de facto structure for almost all sports racing cars.
The Enigma was invented shortly after the end of the First World War, and it would go on to be one of the most important machines of the Second. The device itself is relatively small, about the size of a mobile typewriter, but it was capable of encrypting messages in any of 159 million million…
K-Canvas is a new material developed by the team at Earnest Co. to offer the comfort and wearability of cotton canvas, with the extreme durability of Dupont Kevlar®. Through trial and testing they created a fabric with 52% heavy duty canvas and 48% Kevlar® that’s comfortable to wear, and is so strong it easily passed…
Jack Ehret, the Black Lightning, and the road near Gunnedah On January 19th, 1953 Jack Ehret rolled his Vincent Black Lightning onto the gleaming asphalt near Gunnedah in eastern Australia where a 2 ¼ mile straight straight stretch of road had been closed by an accommodating constable, so Jack could take a shot at setting a new…
The ExoDyne Electric Motorcycle The ExoDyne is what happens when a talented veterinary orthopedic surgeon turns his attention to building himself an electric motorcycle. It’s there work of Alan Cross, an Atlanta based Vet who also happens to have a degree in engineering, and a wide swathe of metalworking and fabrication skills that are self-taught….
