Part car, part boat, all washed up: the 1907 Ravaillier

What’s maddening about this photo of an amphibious automobile from the George Grantham Bain collection in the Library of Congress archives isn’t that it’s presented in the archives without context – we can easily find out the who, what, when – it’s that, despite all of our research, we still don’t know precisely why this […]

Fran Hernandez: a life in pictures

If there’s an unsung hero of American performance cars, it’s Francisco “Fran” Hernandez, the Southern California hot rodder turned factory racing facilitator. He’s known variously for being one of the contenders in the first drag race, one of the pioneers of nitromethane use in drag cars, the guy behind Mercury’s Trans-Am efforts, and one of […]