The look of pure nonchalance on the faces of Leo Payne and his frame-holding friend in this photograph still makes me smile. Leo was a well-known drag racer from the ’50s right through to the ’70s, he’s known for his technical expertise at developing nitro-methane racing carburettors and for being the first man to break the 200mph barrier on a non-streamlined motorcycle.
Read more about Leo here, via the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame.
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 Triumph Tiger Cub was the first motorcycle ridden by many young motorcyclists in Britain, not to mention Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, and the USA. The Tiger Cub was a dominant small-capacity motorcycle in the 1950s and 1960s before the tsunami-like influx of cheap and cheerful Japanese motorcycles. It was a time when Britain…
The Bimota SB2 was a significant evolutionary step forward for motorcycles when it was released in 1977. Massimo Tamburini had designed not just a superbike, but the future of superbikes. His new creation featured an ultra-lightweight chromium molybdenum trellis perimeter frame, a bulletproof Suzuki GS750 DOHC engine that doubled as a stressed member, and handling…
Every now and then I like to feature something slightly ridiculous, and the Ka-Bar Tactical Military Spork definitely fits the bill. Although there’s clearly humor to be had with anything called a tactical spork, it does actually look kind of useful as a cheap ($13~), lightweight cutlery option for when you’re out in the wild….
This article was written by the builder of Turbo Maximus – Derek Kimes. When possible we like to bring you the story of a build in the words of the person who built it to cut out the middle man and give you insight into the methods and thought process. My Background After serving 8…
The Montague Paratrooper Bike was developed with a grand from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Unites States Military to provide paratroopers and other special forces soldiers with a strong, fast, and almost entirely silent form of transportation upon landing. Militaries around the world have faced the same problem when it comes…
The 1965 Pontiac GTO Chief Camino is a one-off vehicle that should almost certainly have been built and offered for sale by Pontiac in the mid-1960s. It never was, but this is probably due to the fact that there’s no indication Pontiac even considered building it. The car you see here wasn’t built by them,…
