A Short History of the Porsche 356 Speedster The Porsche 356 Speedster is a car that Porsche was reticent to build. The regular 356 was selling well in the USA, but hugely influential importer Max Hoffman had been on the phone explaining to the chaps in Stuttgart that there would be a strong market for a…
A Short History of Board Track Racing Board track racing was one of the first mass-spectator forms of motor sport, it rapidly rose to popularity in the 1910s and peaked in the 1920s, before quickly disappearing forever during the difficult years of the Great Depression. The first board track was the Los Angeles Motordrome (pictured below) built…
The Lancia Delta S4 is a car designed to race in the most compelling, and dangerous, form of rallying ever devised – Group B. Both supercharging and turbocharging were used on the Delta S4, a system commonly referred to as twincharging, and in full race trim the 890 kilogram car was capable of over 500…
A Short History of the Norton Domiracer Norton Motorcycles was returned to England in 2008, after having spent 15 years in American hands. Norton is one of the most iconic of all the British motorcycle marques, so its return to British hands was warmly welcomed, even though the timing coincided with the Great Recession – leaving many…
A Brief History of George Barris The Team Knight Rider High Speed Pursuit Vehicle was designed by the legendary George Barris of Barris Kustom – the same man who created the 1966 Batmobile, the Munster Coach, the truck from The Beverly Hillbillies, and some of the later versions of KITT from the original Knight Rider series….
A Brief History of the Egli-Vincent The Egli-Vincent was originally built to fix a design flaw in the Vincent Black Shadow – its frame. Although highly innovating for the time, the frame wasn’t really strong enough for the speeds and suspension loads endured by the bike – and a Swiss motorcycle racer named Fritz Egli had…
The Mercury Cougar Boss 302 is exceptionally rare even amongst other low volume American muscle cars, just 169 were built, and it’s not known exactly how many have survived to the modern day. The Mercury Cougar Mercury introduced the Boss 302 in 1969 as a special version of the Cougar Eliminator, it was marketed as…
The Chevrolet Corvette L88 was a special version of the iconic American sports car that was available for just 3 years – between 1967 and 1969. Chevrolet kept the existence of the L88 option package very low key in order to try to avoid having regular customers buy them – they were really intended as…
A Very Short History of Velocette Velocette was a British motorcycle manufacturer founded by the German-born Johannes Gütgemann, who would change his name to John Taylor when he moved to England as a 19 year old, before finally settling on an anglicised version of his birth name – John Goodman. Initially Goodman founded a company…
The Alfa Romeo Giulia Sprint GTA was the out-and-out race version of the Giulia Sprint GT road car – just 500 GTAs were built for homologation and today they’re highly sought after by collectors and vintage racers. The Story of the Alfa Romeo Giulia Sprint GTA The “A” added at the tail end of the…
The Aston Martin DB6 was produced in higher numbers than its forebear the DB5, and it would be the last in the original series of DB cars until the arrival of the DB7 in 1994. The DB6 was by far the most refined of the early DB models, offering more interior space and adequate headroom…
The Matchless Model X was released in 1929 and sold until the Second World War got underway in 1939, with the final examples being built in 1940. It was characterised by its 990cc V-twin, a hefty side-valve engine perfectly suited to sidecar hauling. Riders without sidecars attached enjoyed an exceptionally fast motorcycle for the age,…
