John Hacker spent 6 decades designing some of the most beautiful mahogany speed boats the world has ever seen, he invented the now ubiquitous “V”-hull design and he built the floating biplane for the Wright brothers after the turn of the 20th Century.
His company, Hacker-Craft is the longest running motorised wooden boat company in the world and it seems almost surreal that you can still today buy a bespoke Hacker race boat and have it delivered to you anywhere in the world.
This is the Hacker-Craft Racer, it’s available in sizes ranging from 22 to 30 feet with a variety of engine options. Pricing isn’t listed and it isn’t mentioned if they’ll take a wife as a trade in.
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.
I’d never seen a 1980 Mercury Cosworth Capri before stumbling across this one, and that shouldn’t really be that surprising as only one of them was ever made. The car is a proof-of-concept prototype overseen by the Ford Motor Company but actually developed by the Mercury and McLaren Engines Inc. The Cosworth BDA Connection McLaren Engines Inc. had previously…
The Technique of Motor Racing by Piero Taruffi is the book that all other instructional motor racing books are measured against. It was written by Taruffi, nicknamed the “Silver Fox”, in 1959 after he retired from motor racing in 1957 following a promise to his wife to retire once he’d won the Mille Miglia. He…
The Ford 427 ci SOHC “Cammer” V8 engine was nicknamed the “90 Day Wonder” by the team at Ford’s version of Area 51 – the X-Garage. The development timeline of the engine was exceedingly short, the mission brief was to develop a high-revving single overhead cam engine for use in NASCAR to take the…
This is an original Water Sprite Outboard Motor from 1907, just 5 of these are known to survive in the world and this restored example is possibly the best example of them all. Many of the parts you’d expect to find on a modern outboard engine are all present on the Water Sprite – it’s…
This series of 26 images were taken in March 1993 by Matt Thompson and his family, on a special birthday trip to the Britten workshop near Christchurch in 1993. These photographs been completely unseen by anyone other than Matt and his family for the past 26 years. 1993 was a big year for the John…
This short marketing film is so abstract that I couldn’t pass up the chance to feature it here, it’s a James Bond parody of sorts, the first Bond film “Dr No” had been released in 1962 which was just 3 years earlier. It features characters named James Bland and Dr Yes, along with a few…
