The NHRA or National Hot Rod Association was founded by Wally Parks in 1951, he wanted to get drag racing off the streets and onto safer, professional level tracks and in doing so he doubtless saved a lot of young men’s lives throughout the 50’s and 60’s.
This great 10:00 minute film covers the first ever national scale NHRA drag racing event in 1955, it’s Super-8 footage so sadly there’s no audio but it’s still well worth a watch.
Some of the cars featured are so unique that I was a a little frustrated that so little information is available on them, it seems that quite a strong cottage-industry had built up around drag racing and hand-built, one-off cars were a fairly common sight at the strip.
Ben Branch has had his work featured on CNN, Popular Mechanics, the official Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with millions of readers around the world and hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
The 2018 Desert Race Oregon surprised us for several reasons. First, we knew we were taking a risk by stepping away from a more conventional desert sprint like we had hosted earlier in the year in Joshua Tree, California.
Dynamics Of A Crash is a ’70s film from Chrysler Corporation about car crashes and passenger safety, all cars were fitted with seatbelts in the USA from 1968 onwards as per Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 208, however seatbelt wearing wouldn’t become mandatory until the mid-1980s in most US states. There was a significant resistance…
This is the Tot Rod, a bespoke kid’s car designed as a miniature evocation of the ’32 Ford – often referred to as the Deuce and generally regarded as the single most important car in the decades long history of hot rods. Any parent will tell you that almost all modern children’s toys are built…
The Vaktare M.G. Aviator Jacket is a new design from the American motorcycle gear manufacturer, it was designed in the style of classic aviator jackets from the golden age of piston-powered fighter aircraft – but it includes a series of features to make it suitable for motorcycle use. Vaktare M.G. Vaktare M.G. is an LA-based…
This is the DeLorean documentary by Pennebaker Hegedus Films, it’s a full-length film about the DeLorean Motor Corporation, the DMC-12, John DeLorean, and the trials and tribulations that the company confronted before the launch of their iconic car. Filmmakers Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker are icons of the direct cinema approach to filmmaking, they typically…
The Unimog 404 was the second major iteration of the legendary German off-roader named by taking the letters from three words – UNIversal MOtor Gerät, or “universal power unit” in German. In the years shortly after WWII many engineers at automakers around the world were seeking to build a vehicle that could function as both…
