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!

Sometimes a video is too good not to share.

We’ve blathered on about the brutal beauty of Group B rally time and time again. But we don’t care.

There’s something so brilliant about the way these machines moved — and the Lancia entry into the formula, the S4 has always been our favourite

The sound, the handling and the general stance and poise of these cars makes you ache for a drive, does it not? Up to 1000bhp. A loose-surfaced pull away to sixty in around two and a half seconds. Both sorts of forced induction.

Hold on to your hats!

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.

When Nicolas Refn’s film Drive came out last september we were obviously interested straight away.

What’s not to like about putting the words ‘existential’ and ‘car’ together?

Any close reader of this blog will understand that imbuing meaning into cars is what we’re all about.

But it’s easy to disappear, of course, in a void of pretence — and to project your own fantasies of what cars mean to you — when writing about these things.

We saw the film at the movies and was pretty unimpressed. Not sure wether we expected a full on action extravaganza crossed with a Euro art-house flick — an impossible mix that would have been bound to fail.

However it happened, we were left somehow wanting more.

We had a feeling that the problem might have something to do with time and place and context — and so, we watched it again recently.

What arises on second viewing is a much more powerful, resonant movie. We found that we remembered many of the lines and the scenes hit by hit — and the most important thing that arises is ‘the driver’ and his relationship to the cars that are his vehicles through his many moral minefields.

The video below (taken from the DVD extras, I believe), brings out how deeply tuned into the steel the lead actor Ryan Gosling became during the production of the movie — and I reckon there’s something visceral and real about a bloke’s relationship with his motor that resonates.

Never know, it may turn out to be a classic after all.

And that movie poster is a bit special too.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Stumbled across an amazing collection of original Motorsports slides today for sale on eBay.

It really brings to mind the glorious beauty of film and transparency photography.

We here at Influx towers are of course obvious revelers in the joys of digital photography. We have utilised the full quiver of readymade tools that have been developed to saturate your pics with that old school, retro feel.

Seeing these slides, though, you can really feel how our user-friendly digital retrospectives can’t yet match the lovely feel of the real thing.

Not sure exactly who the subjects are and exactly which motorsports seasons we’re looking at here: perhaps you can help?

pic: Michael Fordham

Thanks to the kind folks at Wikipedia chrome, or chrome plating, is actually a technique of electroplating a thin layer of the chemical element chromium onto a metal object.

It was originally used extensively in industrial and military applications, from as far back as 2000 years ago in China. Chrome’s hard, slippery properties helped reduce friction and increased the hardness of any metal surface to which it was applied.

But mid-century folk started applying it to objects of desire like cars and bikes, well, the rest is history.

But we couldn’t help noticing that new technologies, not to mention the ease of digital render, has made full body chrome, or chrome effect bodywork, become something to think about. Even this sort of job makes your ride look for Tron than American Graffiti.

We scoped the outrageously chromed AMG at the recent Autosport show, and the gallery is a ragbag digest of shiny contemporaries from all over the webs. Try to separate the renders from the real.

We reckon the mainstream carmakers should offer chrome as an option…

Photograph: John Witzig

Even if you care nothing about the noble art of surfing, if you have a penchant for the abilities of old cars to take you places you won’t fail to enjoy this heart-heart-rendingly nostalgic video from Australia in the 1960s.

And whats more you’ll see how hard these fellas pushed their heavy old heaps of Aussie iron. You could wile away a fun ten minutes trying to name which cars are which. We’re certainly no Australian car experts.

It focuses on the explorations of a coterie of Australian surf pioneers, at the heart of which were Bob McTavish pictured overlooking one of Noosa’s point-breaks, is lovely old FJ Holden in silent contemplation to the right.

The picture by Photographer John Witzig is one of those that’s passed into legend. Noosa heads, now about as crowded and developed as a beach side resort can get, was when Witzig and friends like hydrodynamic Genius George Greenough found it, this eden like exotic spot.

Certainly shows that you don’t need bespoke, surf-marketed SUVs to get you places.

All I’ve Found (George Greenough) — Sea Movies from www.KORDUROY.tv on Vimeo.

If you’ve ever been to the little island of Malta you’ll have noticed at least two truths. The Maltese are mad (in a passionate, hilariouly, brilliant way) and they are into their motors.

In fact, the latter part is taken into their culture right to the heart. And as well as blasting little birds out of the sky with rifles, all things automotive obsesses your average Maltese heart in the same way as food, love and intrigue remain the quotidian passions of your typical Parisien.

A brilliant little book edited by Maltese writer Emma Mattei brings out this seldom focused upon aspect of her homeland — and this is just a little part of its broad and deep appeal.

Two photo essays and a little bit of ruminatively well-written text will take you through the details. The roads are in pretty poor condition and there’s not much total mileage of them anyway, and the wheezing, belching buses transport a lot of the punters around the island.

But even if you don’t care a stuff for cars, this little book is really worth getting hold of. It’s a truly uncommon guide to a place and its people.

Available from Miranda Books

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.