One has to wonder how so many carmakers get away with appropriating reusing existing names in the automotive pantheon. By dint of their size and access to lawyers, probably. As we ponder that, the Hi...
A majority of Americans and American Manufacturers could see the handwriting on the wall in 1945. The war would soon be over, but nobody knew exactly when. War-time scrap metal and newspaper drives w...
Photos courtesy Gary Bricken. Sure, Ford’s Model A – like the Model T before it – assumed many different roles, whether it be racer, fire truck, or killer hot rod roadster. But even dedicated Model A...
Front view. Photography by author. While digging around in the basement the other day, my first Pinewood Derby racer resurfaced. Upon reading that sentence, those of you who were in the Cub Scouts li...
While the vintage racing footage includes plenty of glimpses of all sorts of NASCAR notables from the aero war era, the focus on this two-part documentary is on the Chargers and on Dodge’s efforts to...
As if we couldn’t tell from previous scratchbuilt trucks built by the brothers Read, Cliff and Larry, they have a fairly masterful knowledge of trucking history, down to the small but significant det...
Photos by the author. Ever since the 1950s when my father bought us a Lionel train set I’ve been hooked on toy trains. I still have that Texas Special F3, complete with scratches from running over hu...
As we’ve already seen, brothers Cliff and Larry Read have a talent for not only improving existing diecast models, but also transforming them from their original configurations to something entirely ...
The Dude’s 1973 Gran Torino. Photo via IMCDB.org. While it’s not considered much of a car movie, the Coen Brothers’ 1998 cult classic The Big Lebowski is one of only a handful of films to inspire fes...
The model-building work of brothers Cliff and Larry Read continues to astound. Courtesy Gene Herman, we’ve received a few more writeups on how the brothers take inexpensive scale models and turn them...
There’s something we love about one of the more recent photos on Michael Paul Smith’s Flickrstream. It only has a handful of old cars in it, and it doesn’t include any crazy flying saucers, robots, o...
Photos courtesy Cliff and Larry Read, except where noted. Our previous look at the scratchbuilt model work of Cliff and Larry Read, courtesy Gene Herman, might have made it seem as though only one of...
Photos by J. Daniel Beaudry If you began reading Hemmings in the 1950s or ’60s, there’s no doubt you’d recognize what car this interesting piece of sculpture represents. But as the hobby has shifted ...
Thanks to longtime commenter and contributor Gene Herman, we recently got to see the work that brothers and model builders Cliff and Larry Read have been doing. Quite impressive. From Cliff: During t...
A Ford GT40 Mk I battles a Cobra Daytona Coupe. Photos by author. In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve been holding out on you. I’ve never discussed my collection of historically significant raci...
Cox Chaparral slot car kit; image by the author This is it; the big race. Your car is perfectly positioned on the grid for maximum launch. The gearing, tires and motor have all been checked and reche...
The Dick Tracy Copmobile; images by author. Look hard enough at any swap meet, and you’re bound to find something from your formative years; it’s at that moment when you mutter, “Had I known it was g...
1914 Regal Lil’ Old Timers model; image by author. Scale models have been a big part of the collector-car hobby for nearly as long as the hobby has been around. Over the decades, many a life-size car...
The Replicarz 1/18 scale 1967 STP Paxton turbine. Photos by Mark Fothergill, courtesy Replicarz, unless otherwise noted. With driver Parnelli Jones in the cockpit, the STP-sponsored, turbine-powered ...
Banthrico’s 1937 Rolls-Royce; image by the author. Everyone had a piggy bank. Other than being used to store newfound wealth due to a paper route or other part-time job, it was employed to teach us c...