If it weren’t for insurance…

If you’ve ever lived in an apartment, or in some other arrangement where you didn’t have access to a space to work on your car, you’ve likely had the same idea that Ray Woolley had: a self-service garage, where the garage owner provides the space and tools for rent, while you provide the labor. Woolley […]

Raymond Parks, founding father, 1914-2010

Too few people know it, but one of the most important single persons in the history of American auto racing passed away last weekend. Raymond Parks was the final surviving attendee at the 1947 meeting during which NASCAR was founded; he died in Atlanta just two weeks after his 96th birthday.

photo by Eddie Samples
People who […]

Nikola Tesla’s pound-per-horsepower engine

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 […]