If we had to pick lensman to define what we love about people, bikes and cars, then it would be Scott Pommier.

There’s something timelessly appealing about the way he extracts the personality and passion of his subjects — be they human or mechanical.

We’ve featured Scott’s work a lot over the years, so we were really happy when into our inbox popped a message that he had finally created a TUMBLR site.

Here our fave LA based Canadian will be sharing some never seen and some classic images that have kept us enthused about the relationship between people and their wheels, some of the stuff that might not have made it into the commercial and editorial edits he has created.

Anyway, here’s a few choice cuts from the site — be sure to follow!

The artist known as MIA is pretty controversial. The Londoner with a Sri Lankan heritage has always polarised opinion, mixing up musical and creative influences from everywhere, and messing generally with the field of expectations and images.

The video below for her new single ‘bad girls’ is another provocative edit of seemingly divergent images. This time try bad girls, street racers, and Kalashnikov-weilding insurgent-types for size.

Apparently shot in Morocco (though obviously evoking the more troubled environs of North Africa and the middle east), there’s an interesting inclusion of beemers and Alfas making use of the loose render of the dusty roads.

Not sure how we’re supposed to read this mad mashup of cultural forms. We dig it anyhow.

Oh, and she ‘upstaged’ Madonna at the Superbowl. What’s not to like?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Images Via Life Archive/Conceptcarz/Supercars.net.

Italian neorealist film director Roberto Rossellini had a bit of taste.

Not only was he one of the definitive auteurs of post war European cinema, he also commissioned this gobsmakingly beautiful car. You can see by the cut of his suit that the man had style. But getting on the phone and getting Sr. Scaglietti to rebody your Ferrari?

That’s what we call panache.

The story goes that the car the great director owned was originally a red 375 Pininfarina Spyder but was rebodied as a Coupé by Scaglietti and painted silver.

And you can see how the Coupé format works perfectly for those Northern European winters (Rossellini spent a lot of time in Paris). Notice those wonderfully scalped flanks similar to those on the 250TR, the pinched rear end that was such an inspiration for the E-Type, and of course that wonderfully long, elegently scooped nose.

Whoever restred this beauty showed real attention to detail, as you can see from the beautifully rendered interior. And though you’d have to sell a small family’s worth of kidneys to afford even those wire wheels, there’s something of that spartan, post WW2 Italian aesthetic that’s reflected in its incredible presence.

The perfect car for the perfect creator. We’re in love.

I always thought the 512 BB was a really under rated Ferrari.

In my opinion, in fact it’s one of the prettiest Ferraris ever.

There was something wonderfully understated about those Pininfarina lines. As a kid in the seventies it seemed the cooler, more elegant opposition to Lamborghini’s outrageous Countach.

It probably stemmed from the time I came up close and personal with one.

As a kid (I must have been 9 or Ten years old), me and my mate Keith Curwood would cycle down to the junction of the A12 and sit there and spot cars. Sad but true.

Every now and then, when the main lights turned red, a real gem would turn up. It’s a bit of weird ‘confession of an urban kid of the seventies’ thing to admit, but this was the only sort of geeky sport I was interested in.

I would of course pretend by Raleigh Grifter was a Moto Guzzi Le Mans too, and tug the flappy mud guard end to scrap along across the knobbly tires so it made a noise that approximated the sound of an Italian V-Twin.

This was all included in my mass of pre-teen dreams of exotic power and freedom a nice precursor to that flowering of auto-eroticism that came once we went to big school.

The 512 BB that pulled up was, I remember as if it was yesterday, an incredible powder blue, and it had cream leather interior and an even more incredible blond siren sitting in the passenger seat, wearing a hugely furry white fur coat.

This was bling before bling was bling, a Boogie Nights style spangled up deliciousness of a scenario.

It must have been 1976 or something. And it stayed with me for the rest of my life.

The 523 BB had 12 cyclinders arranged in a boxer engine, and prefigured cars like the 308, 328 and the Testarossa.

So, even if it stood in the Countach’s shadow from the moment it was born in 1974, it will always represent to me much more than the Lambo’s slightly staid cousin.

image PRPS

A lot of people out there are understandably dubious about the connections between car culture and fashion.

This video, though, is really worth a look. Donwan Harrell is a car nut and creator of PRPS, a high end jean brand out of the states. And the video, scored Via Highsnobiety and The Slevedge Yard this week, brings out how car culture has in fact informed the designer’s passions and crystallised in Japanese spun Selvedge denim.

It’s a bit of a stretch, sometimes, to draw parallels between cultural forms as vastly opposed to all things greasy and automotive and the perceived, fey, fickle and transient world of the catwalk.

So often ‘Fashion’ as a business exploits subcultures, little scenes of passionate friends engaged in whatever pursuit floats their boat — in order simply to sell the look and feel of the obsession to the rank and file of the mainstream.

PRPS seems to be a little bit different.

Click here to view the embedded video.

image via Bike Exif

Three-chords, crap equipment, not much talent, lots of enthusiasm. Young men and women have been in garage bands since skiffle was The Next Big Thing, but it was only during the wave of 1977 punk that the garage bands broke big.

Top-selling punks may not have had the same skills as the Stones or Fleetwood Mac, but they offered an alternative that was lapped up. A similar revolution is happening in motorcycle customisation.

Image:Wrenchmonkees

Like punk rock often said it was rebelling against the overblown excesses of ten-minute guitar solos and prog rock, the new generation of custom builders are the antithesis of American Chopper’s fat tyre monstrosities, and showrooms full of 190mph traction-controlled superbikes. And, though the movement started before the global meltdown, its growth has mirrored the fall in sales of big ticket bikes.

The new wave customs are neither chopper nor café racer, but they borrow cues from all genres. They tend to start with unloved, cheap Japanese bikes – though the burgeoning scene is sending prices of air-cooled, spine-frame Jap stuff roofwards. Anything from the 1970s onwards is fair game. Singles, twins, fours; two-stroke or four; Jap, Brit, German, Italian: animal, vegetable or mineral. This isn’t a cult with a basis is performance one-upmanship. It’s creativity and originality (without straying into parody or overt gimmickry) is what pushes the boundaries and attracts the four-figure facebook ‘likes’.

image: Untitled

One reason this style of custom is becoming so popular is due to the fact they’re relatively easy and cheap projects to complete by someone, anyone, with a few spanners. You don’t even need a garage to be in this garage band. Inspired hopefuls see bikes being fawned over on the Net and, like a thousand oiks of previous generations watching Top of the Pops in the late-70s, think ‘I could do that.’

Wheels, brakes and suspension can be changed, but aren’t always. Rake, trail and wheelbase all tend to remain the same. No one is building one-off frames or investing in forced induction or race tuning. Replace the tank, seat and bars with stuff picked up cheap online or at the autojumble. Paint is simple or non-existent. Steel or alloy tanks stripped bare and lacquered or left to ‘weather’ are popular.

image via Bike Exif

Next, junk standard airboxes and exhausts and fit filters and new silencers. If you’re more adept, make a new sub-frame for the stripped-down back end. Fit new tyres – chunky is best — and a tiddly taillight. Voila! But, like a punk band, however much you sneer and spit, if you haven’t got the chops you are going to fail. For the garage-built bike scene, if the stance of bike is hinky, it’ll still look like an unloved bike with a rusty petrol tank and knobblies, however hard you try. There are plenty of those around.

Image: Deus

The godfathers of the scene are the Wrenchmonkees. Based in a cellar in the outskirts of Copenhagen, they modified a trio of big, four-cylinder Kawasakis back in 2008, before moving onto twins and singles. It’s no coincidence two of the original trio of Monkees were professional photographers.

They shot and disseminated their tough street bikes in a fresh, urban style. The Monkees themselves – Per, Nicolas and Anders – didn’t look like stereotypical motorcyclists from any pigeon-hole, either. They wore a gene-defying mixture mountaineering Gore-Tex, full-face lids, dark jeans and skateboard shoes and rode in cities, not the unrealistically empty racetracks of mainstream bike ads.

A new generation of motorcyclists saw them on a new generation of website – blogs that would cherrypick inspirational images from all over the web and mash these images of bikes up with architecture, art, cars, tattooed femmes and historic style icons. The Wrenchmonkees didn’t look out of place.

Coincidentally, Deus puffed spores of goodness from their sweet-smelling Sydney HQ. Though not garage-built, their big dollar Yamaha SR500-based builds were close to faultless and had a cleanliness only a truly well-built road bike can achieve. They’ve influenced a thousand builders from Beijing to Bristol, some who copy on the cheap, others who have moved the game on.

People who wouldn’t dream of wearing full leathers and riding a superbike or pulling on a cut-off denim and riding a chop realised there was a bike scene waiting for them. They just had to make it. And they have.

A few years ago we had the pleasure of meeting legendary Jaguar development engineer Norman Dewis. This is the man responsible for the shakedown of many of the most incredible British cars ever made — and some of the out and out most beautiful and successful production cars and racers ever to grace a piece of tarmac.

You can read about our encounter with Norman and the then new Jaguar XF in issue 5 of our print mag here.

For some reason, we never saw this beautiful little Dunhill-produced video last year at the time of the Jaguar XC75’s release. Take a look. it gives a really great insight into the process of Jaguar design, and Norman Dewis and Ian Callum’s collaboration in that process.

What makes car designs that last and become classics is that sort of continuity between form, function, belief and ethos.

We reckon Jaguar’s renaissance of late owes a lot to this. Enjoy and celebrate something that makes us proud to be British!

Cue Elgar.

All images Emile Kozak

Emile Kozac is a prolific creative type.

He photographs strange, absences, landscapes where the captured flies fleetingly by and then disappears. He documents normal things that through the lens become strange, even extraordinary.

he Barcena based Dane also creates amazing graphic work, identities, corporate logis and typography — all shot through with this same minimalist edge that beguiles and intrigues.

Here is a little selection of Emile’s work that has, almost by accident, the road into it.

Bravo Emile. Keep up the good stuff…

images via http://www.acontinuouslean.com/

There are cool bosses and there are cool bosses. And there are cool offices and there are cool offices. But when you get a cool boss that sanctions the build of a cool slot race setup to play with in the office, the cool boss doesn’t get much cooler and the office, of course, doesn’t get much cooler!

We saw these images of a Toronto office set up on cultish style blog ACL and thought we had to share. I don’t think it’s even Scalextric , in fact the closer you look the more kiddly and naïve the setup appears to be – but you gots to love in principle the attitude that facilitates little boy play diversions in one’s place of employ.

Forward these to your guv’nor in advance of the next pay review. Fun, not cash, that’s what we require!

Down tools for ten minutes and enjoy with us this informative and entertaining video of Sir Stirling Moss threading a beautiful little Cooper around Donington Park. The car is similar to the one in which Sir Stirling won the 1958 Argentine Grand Prix — and also the one in which Jack Brabham won the 1959 World Driver’s Championship.

We can’t be sure exactly which designation is the car in the video, a T45 or a T51 — but pedantry aside we think you’ll agree it’s a very lovely piece of machinery.

This is the sort of lightweight, rear-engined car that ushered in an area of Empire dominance and loosened Ferrari, Mercedes and Masterati’s stranglehold on the sport.

Despite its lack of torsional rigidity and safety features it still managed to top 160 on a long straight, and achieved amazing performance for such a small car.

Little wonder the guys, like Stirling, who raced these machines were made of rakish, swashbuckling stuff.