As a follow up to Ryan’s great post from yesterday, I found myself pouring over color footage of cars in motion from the mid to late 1950s. I landed on this fun clip of Los Angeles streets from around 1953 (notice the new Ford’s on the transport truck leaving the Long Beach plant) . It’s [...]
Motion Pictures
As They Were… In Motion.
If you could have only ONE…
Josh Clason and his “Depth of Speed” films have beautifully covered the salt of Bonneville and the NSP Boogie Van, but I found “Poetry in Motion”, this story of a man and his one true dream car since childhood extremely compelling. Before you go cry-posting that a Mercedes 300SL is off topic, just listen to what [...]
El Mirage Season Finale 2012…
The SCTA’s El Mirage November meet. It was the last one of the year, and a two day event at that. I moved some things around on my plate so I could attend for the first time in many years. The forecast promised fair skies and light winds for the weekend. I headed out Friday [...]
Video of the Day: When the Hot Rods Run…
While looking for follow material up to my Japan post, I happened upon this video and thought it was worth sharing. My first attraction to it was the description that listed pioneering Japanese-American hot rodders like Yam Oka and Larry Shinoda. Once I watched the entire video I realized that it’s mainly pre-war dry lakes [...]
Nitro
When you think about the hot rods of the 1940′s, you tend to think in terms of charm rather than violence. The sepia toned imagery of a roadster blasting down the salt in 1948 fails to purvey any kind of sense that something catastrophic looms. Sure, you realize the danger and you have some sense [...]
Lost Art: American Hand III
My ongoing search for the craftsmanship of yesteryear makes a stop closer to home this time. You might remember that my newly acquired ’65 Riviera is currently being housed in the shop of General Gow just outside of Boston, MA. Recently, the good General was enlisted as a subject in part three of John Walley’s [...]
Donuts or Burn Outs?
It’s hard to say which one is more fun to do, and neither of them are exactly “smart” things to perform with your car, but which maneuver is more your style? Laying a straight patch of rubber and a white smokey cloud, or pitching your front wheels to one side and making the rear ones [...]
Los Angeles in the 1950′s
I often wonder how different I’d be as a person if I grew up in the 1950′s rather than the 1980′s. It’s impossible to say, of course, but given the same set of parents I don’t know that there would be much change. While I imagine the public culture is a world different and values [...]
Drag Racing In Michigan – 1953
I was tooling around youtube and found some footage of the first legal drag race in the state of Michigan. Comments claim that the race went down in Amrhein just off of Eckles in Livonia – the Chevrolet Spring & Bumper plant provides the background. It also appears that Frank Mack and his roadster makes [...]
