Weekend getaway

1941 Bioplastic Ford

In 1941 Henry Ford developed a car that included a large percentage of hemp based plastic in its production. Read about it at The Angry Historian.

Chinese mini mixer

Apparently the driver found that it is advantageous to add counterweights on the passenger's side 

Abernathy brothers

Louis (age 14) and Temple (age 9) Abernathy rode an Indian motorcycle from Oklahoma to New York City in 1913.

They had been traveling together for years. In 1909 they rode horseback from Fredrick, Oklahoma to Santa Fe, New Mexico and back. Louis was nine and Temple was five.

After completing the ride to Santa Fe they began planning a ride to New York City to meet Theodore Roosevelt. They made that trip from Oklahoma in 1910 and were greeted as celebrities and rode in a ticker tape parade behind Roosevelt's car. They bought a Brush Motor Car in New York and drove it back to Oklahoma. They were ten and six years old.

In 1911 they accepted the challenge of riding horseback from New York to San Francisco in sixty days or less. They agreed not to eat or sleep indoors during the trip. A prize of $10.000 was offered. After a long trip they arrived in San Francisco in sixty two days and failed to secure the prize.

4x4 2CV Safari

           

1968 Oldsmobile Toronado Jetway 707

Sporting 6 wheels, 8 doors  and carrying 15 passengers with luggage. 52 of these Jetways were produced. Read more here. 

1955 Brutsch Zwerg Einsitzer

Brutsch Fahrzeugbau was a German designer and automaker in Stuttgart, Baden-Wurttemberg. He designed and built numerous micro cars. He normally built several cars of a new design and then made an effort to sell a license to other companies to actually produce them in large numbers. Between 1952 through 1958 Brutsch manufactured eleven different models but only a total of eighty-one cars were built. The cars usually had body designs that consisted of two polyester and fiberglass molded pieces bonded together at a center seam.

The example shown is the Zwerg. It carried two people and was powered by a Fichtel & Sachs single cylinder engine displacing 191cc (75 cubic inches). Power was delivered through a four speed manual gearbox. Top speed was 85km/hr (53mph). Twelve of the Zwerg were produced at the time and only four still exist in England.

Additional information on Brutsch can be found on Wikipedia.

2022 Tundra turbo replacement

Russian pipe haulers

Security fence

This little piggy went to market

Flight school

China jam

This recurring traffic jam began to form in August of 2010. It is mostly on  China National Highway 110 and the Beijing-Tibet expressway. The traffic jam slowed thousand of vehicles for more than 60 miles and lasted for 12 days. Many drivers reported that they were able to move their vehicles about a half a mile per day and some drivers were stuck in the traffic for five days.

Borgward Traumwagen

While most German vehicle production was directed at small cars Carl Borgward felt he could compete with the American large car market with his Traumwagen. He hoped to introduce his car at the 1955 Frankfurt Motor Show. That plan was foiled when the brakes failed and the car fragile aluminum body was severely damaged in a crash when the brakes failed.

Additional information and photos are here.

Road train

 

Life imitating art

That's a wrap

Make no mistake

Bike share gone bad

I am unaware of the cause but a number of Chinese companies started bike share businesses and invested in thousands of bicycles before realizing it wasn't going to work. There are a lot of spaces filled with bikes waiting to be disassembled for recycling.

2000 Audi concept Rosemeyer

Yesterday's post was about Audi building the Type 52 Schnellsportwagen. The car was designed in the 1930's but not built until 2023. 

Apparently Audi toyed with the idea in 2000 when they built the Rosemeyer concept car.