When Playboys Ruled The World is a documentary about Barry Sheene and James Hunt – two of the most iconic racers of the ’70s and ’80s. Hunt was a Formula 1 driver and Barry Sheene was a grand prix motorcycle racer, both men became famous for their antics both on and off the asphalt with James Hunt’s name now being almost synonymous with the concept of a playboy.
In spite of (or perhaps because of) the two men’s extra curricular activities they were both staggeringly talented racers, both men would win world championships – which was wildly irritating to their slightly more serious peers.
The full documentary runs at about an hour long, it’s a fantastic bit of filmmaking and it’s a must watch for anyone interested in vintage motor racing.
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.
This feature was written by Jo-Ann McEwan, the editor of In Venus Veritas and a well-known fixture of the vintage motoring scene in Australia. Follow them on Instagram – Kate Peck – Jo-Ann McEwan For those unfamiliar with motorsport or Italian food, targa florio may sound like something one could expect to find on a…
Under the hood of the Berardini Bros 1932 Ford was a Flathead V8 so dominant on the 1/4 mile drag strips of the LA-area in the 1950s that the very sound of it would strike fear into the hearts of its competitors. Pat and Tony Berardini won the Gas and Fuel Street Roadster Championships from…
This short film by the team at Wired gives a remarkably detailed look at the disassembly process of two automatic mechanical watches, one by a Japanese manufacturer and one by a Swiss manufacturer. The film is hosted by appropriately named professional watchmaker Ryan Jewell, he does an excellent job of explaining how the watches work,…
To say that the Greeves Challenger, and all Greeves motorcycles, were ahead of their time is to significantly understate the remarkable foresight of Bert Greeves and his lightweight two-stroke off-road racing motorcycles. Bert developed the first examples of his scrambles and trials machines in 1952, almost 20 years before lightweight two-stroke motorcycles would rise to…
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…
John Mollo was the costume designer for Star Wars (1977) and The Empire Strikes Back (1980), this is his sketchbook from the period of January 1978 to October 1979, and it includes many original costume designs from The Empire Strikes Back as well as two other films Mollo was working on at the time –…
