Carl Benz: pushed out of his own company for being too slow
In 1903 Benz & Cie. replaced Carl Benz with a 25-year-old Frenchman. The sales collapse, the Paris-Madrid, and the boxer engine nobody credits him for.
automotive history
Siegfried Marcus: erased by the Nazis, buried by a fake date
The 1940 Propaganda Ministry letter to Daimler-Benz, the seizure of his car, and why the 1875 date the ASME still prints is false.
Manuel Jiménez-Alfaro: The Colonel Who Beat Volkswagen to Spain
Manuel Jiménez-Alfaro won the Renault 4CV license by threatening to go to Volkswagen, then founded FASA, Spain’s first private car plant. The real story.
Adams-Farwell: the Iowa car whose entire engine spun around a crankshaft that never moved
Adams-Farwell: five cylinders spinning around a crankshaft that never moved. From an Iowa stove factory to a 1909 helicopter and WWI fighters.
FERDINAND PORSCHE
Ferdinand Porsche Sold the Same Idea for 45 Years Ferdinand Porsche was not an engineer. He held no degree. The “Dr. Ing.” still baked into the company’s legal name carries an “h.c.” that nobody bothers to read: honoris causa. Honorary. The “Professor” is no better earned: the Stuttgart Technical University handed him an honorary chair … Read more
FIAT TURBINA
Fiat Turbina: The Jet-Age Prototype America Never Heard Of Ask an American gearhead about turbine-powered cars and you’ll get one answer: the Chrysler Turbine Car, the bronze coupe Chrysler loaned out to ordinary families in 1963 as a rolling experiment. What most of them don’t know is that nine years earlier, an Italian engineering team … Read more
NSU
NSU: The Company That Reinvented Itself Four Times, Then Died the Moment It Finally Nailed It Say “NSU” to most American enthusiasts and you’ll get a blank look, or maybe “isn’t that the rotary thing?” The Wankel. The Ro80. As if the company was born in 1967 to build one weird engine and then promptly … Read more
AUSA
AUSA PTV: the Spanish carmaker that survived by killing its own car The first site dumper ever built in Spain ran on the engine out of a two-seat convertible. Manresa, 1960. Same engine, same carburetor, same shed, same men. The only thing that changed was who was paying: instead of a gentleman in a hat … Read more
PININFARINA
Pininfarina, The House: Ninety-Five Years of Shaping Cars That Other People Built The Geneva Motor Show of 2012. Ferrari unveiled the F12berlinetta. A brutal car — naturally aspirated V12, razor lines, the last card played by pre-turbo Maranello. Nobody made much of it that morning, but the F12 was the last road-going Ferrari drawn by … Read more
AUDI V12 TDI
Audi V12 TDI: The Greatest Diesel Ever Built, Killed By Audi America never got the Audi V12 TDI. That turns out to be the least interesting thing about it. Here’s the more interesting thing. The V12 TDI is not the Le Mans engine. It doesn’t share the vee angle, the displacement, or the architecture with … Read more
PORSCHE 542
Porsche 542: The Car Studebaker Paid For And Never Built Studebaker wrote Porsche a check for roughly half a million 1952 dollars and got nothing out of it. Porsche used that money to build the assembly hall in Zuffenhausen that still turns out 911s today. The dying American company paid for the German company’s factory. … Read more
FERRARI ENZO
Ferrari Enzo: too much name for one car Ferrari did not put Enzo Ferrari’s first name on a road car to decorate the history books. It did it because the entire project had to answer for him. In 2002, Maranello could have followed the obvious sequence. F40. F50. Another code, another number, another supercar carrying … Read more