* New Audi ad. Features hot rods. Despite reading the admen jibber-jabber about the spot, I still don’t get it. (via)
* The Iron Curtain-era Polish car manufacturer FSO had a pretty good gig going on building GAZes, Polskis and Polish Fiats, two-stroking their way to Communist ecstasy, but one worker got a little uppity and decided to build a fiberglass sports car with a 750cc four-stroke engine. To the gulags with him! Okay ,we made that bit up, but the Polish government did deem the resulting Syrena Sport prototype “too extravagant and imperialistic” and had it destroyed. The Syrena lives on in digital form, though, with at least a couple YouTube tributes. (Thanks for the tip, Johnny B Goode!)
* If you’re trying to get to the Swedish site detailing the discovery and restoration of the two Saab-powered motorhomes, Torsten Johansson’s 92H and 95HK, and can’t, it’s probably because Hooniverse unintentionally crashed it by posting about them the other day. Thanks, guys! *hunts for the sarcasm button – where’s the sarcasm button!?!* Fortunately, they also have a quick writeup on the two rolling breadboxes.
* Following our occasional theme of photos of the insides of exotic car factories, we came across this shot of the production facilities at Shelby American, circa 1965, in a recent LIFE photo gallery celebrating the Mustang. Points for whoever can tell us the CSX numbers of the various cars here.
* Finally, BigLorryBlog channeled 1982 recently for a look at what student designers thought big trucks might look like in the future, say, now. Fortunately, the students got it wrong, which gives me hope that the futuristic designs for big rigs being whipped up now will never come to pass. Interestingly, a few of the designers responsible for these designs have made names for themselves in the automotive industry since then, as the commenters point out.
* Okay, one more. Ever since we posted the link to the best garage restoration we’ve seen this year, Gareth Stackhouse has been fascinated, and he let us know that the restorer of said garage found an intake manifold in his still-massive junkpile that nobody has yet identified. Ever seen anything like it before?