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 Biltwell EXFIL-115 is a waterproof motorcycle bag designed to be as simple and tough as possible – it isn’t just for motorcycle use either, it makes an excellent roofrack bag too. Each EXFIL-115 is made from exceptionally tough UV-treated 500/1000D tarpaulin PVC, with a 100% waterproof roll-top closure, and 2″ ballistic nylon loops on…
The Catalina Grand Prix was an iconic motorcycle race on the small island of Santa Catalina 29 miles off the coast of Long Beach, California. In the 1950s the Catalina Grand Prix attracted hundreds of amateur and professional motorcycle racers from across the United States, it was run over 10 laps of a 10 mile…
The Ford P68, otherwise known as the F3L for “Ford 3 Litre”, is a sports prototype racing car that should probably be just as famous as the Ford GT40 that preceded it. It was essentially a closed-wheel, two-seat Formula 1 car powered by the then-new and unproven Ford-Cosworth DFV V8 Formula 1 engine. The project to…
Retro-RR Magazine is a new quarterly publication dedicated to the golden age of the superbike spanning the 1980s and into the 1990s. The magazine features beautiful photography, behind the scenes stories and big name contributors like Michael Scott, Alan Cathcart, Gordon Ritchie, Stuart Barker, James Wright, David Goldman, and Don Morley Retro-RR was founded by…
The car used in the seminal 1986 film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is widely thought to be a 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California. This is because it looks an awful lot like one, and because it’s literally described in the film as such: “The 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California. Less than 100 were made. My father…
This Husqvarna Model 30 A is a custom motorcycle of sorts – it was built by a privateer racer before Husqvarna offered their own factory-built version – the Model 350DT (DT for “dirt track”). The 1920s and ’30s were an important, formative time for dirt track racing – also called flat track, circle track, and…
