Articles

I don't speak French and I don't understand medicine, but this old newspaper photograph of a racing driver proudly showing off his injuries had me fascinated. Who is this man, stood smiling in just his undercrackers, and how on earth did he end up with the...

Look closely at the photos accompanying this story. These were all taken within four blocks of the seafront at Nice (just before the planes stopped flying). They are just a few examples of the clapped out motors lining the parking bays around the restaurants....

In 1950 Ben Carlin left Halifax, Nova Scotia, on a circumnavigation of the globe by sea and land that would take eight years to complete – an incredible feat that has, to date, never been repeated. Automotive adventurers just don’t get any better than...

Aboard his floating man cave - strewn with aquatic gizmos - Cousteau became the greatest deep-sea explorer of all time. And he owed it all to the flaky electrics of a French-built roadster Jacques-Yves Cousteau was the Godfather of Scuba, inspiring...

If you’re familiar with the title reference then you know I’m going off topic, but not too far, because if there ever was a MotorPunk with wings, this is our man. Forget the Hollywood hoopla, the real ‘Maverick‘ is a Brit who surpasses all illegal...

Okay, it’s been closed for years, the grounds are weed choked, and the racetrack itself is cracking up in places. True, it’s a figure of eight banked oval, so it lacks the style of Goodwood and the allure of the 'Ring, but let’s not talk it down,...

Forgive us this little aeronautical indulgence; at times we find examples of engineering genius/insanity that are too good not to share. Cue the 1917 Supermarine Nighthawk. All those wings! We’ll come back to that. There are other mad details too;...

In 1485, polymath Leonardo da Vinci designed something called an Ornithopter, an early design for a man-powered flying machine. Roughly half a millennium later, moonlighting Cop and friend of MotorPunk, Jeff Bloch, sets out to complete da Vinci’s work....

Some car adverts are brilliant; that one with the Audi R8 on the rolling road for example, never fails to prick up my neck hairs. Those old Jaguar 'gangster' ones were pretty slick too, and back in the day the VWs dropping from the ceiling got everyone’s...