Our friend David Greenlees recently posted this photo over on the H.A.M.B.’s excellent thread of pre-WWII photos, noting that it depicts the salvage yards at 15th and South Main in Los Angeles, circa 1930. “Wouldn’t shopping be fun there today?” he asked. If indeed that’s the location, I’ve yet to find a trace left from […]

While researching the recent post on the Edison-Ford electric car of 1914, it was impossible to avoid coming across references to Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison’s rival and one-time employee, and the story of Tesla’s own electric car, a Pierce-Arrow that supposedly ran on wireless electricity.
Researching that story turned into a hair-pulling exercise that dead-ended all […]

I recall as a kid wondering why the new vehicles my dad bought had a few miles on them when we picked them up from the dealership. It was my strong (perhaps OCD-influenced) belief that a brand-new car should have zero miles on it, no more. Dad explained that the few miles were the result […]