Posts Tagged ‘USA’

Crowe Customs

Thursday, January 5th, 2012

We came across Crowe Customs delightful document­ation of all things lathe-​​ish and metalspun while admiring Benji Wagner’s rather nice photoblog. Benji is a west coast photo­grapher and purveyor of fine outdoorsy type gear in the shape of the Poler brand, and he happens to be a mate of the Oregon custom bike builder.

Our favourite in his small collection of bikes is defin­itely the CB 750 with the Café treatment — we’re not sure if its derived from an original seventies 750 Four (the one with the four pipes all the way to the rear) or whether that lovely exhaust set up is a purely creative act.

Our growing crush on twin potted BMWs given scram­blerish makeovers continues too, though, with the work in progress documented here.

We have to admit that the online appeal of these passionate little outfits is bolstered by the relative quality of present­ation; both photo­graph­ically and in terms of the way their sites are built.

We think the talented Mr Wagner might have something to do with the former in the case of Crowe Customs.

Toyota Tercel

Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

Now, there’s something decidedly unglam­ourous about it, but we have developed a little bit of love for the North American deriv­ative of the Corolla, espcially the 4WD wagon version of it. In fact, we doubt we have or will ever feature a motor with less obvious panache.

But, being connois­seurs of affordable and accessible automotive style we think that the North American denom­in­ation of this utilit­arian stalwart is a desirable ride. These ones are often seen littering the junk yards of Wisconsin lumber­jacks in various nameless and mysterious TV films of the eighties. And on a number of North American blogs we have happened upon recently.

We’re not even sure if the Tercel was ever actually distributed in Europe or the UK. We seem to remember having seen their bulbous everyman loveliness around but we can’t be sure. Any ideas?

Derringer Cycles

Thursday, November 17th, 2011

Images Adrian Van Anz/​Derringer.

We’re moped fans. They’re cheap, fun and quick, and if you live in a sunny envir­onment like southern California they make more sense than a smart car.
And while moped is usually a cypher for all that is terminally uncool, there’s no tangible reason why there has to be something geekily anti-​​stylish about them.
This is wear Derringer cycles come in.

The person behind Derringer is a Santa Monica native and indus­trial designer by the name of Adrian Van Anz.

The bike-​​crazy Van Anz realised a few years ago that light motorised bikes just might be the perfect form of trans­port­ation for Angelinos — residents of a city where you not only can you turn right on a red, but is almost perman­ently mild and sunny.

But rather than stick to the functional form of the European moped, this Californian decided to base his new designs on board track racers of the 1920s.

But while the original, hugely popular form of racing featured perman­ently opened throttles and little or no braking facil­ities, these cool little beasts make small conces­sions to safety. They’ve got brakes and everything.

A custom Derringer has a top end of a less than adrenalin-​​pumping 35mph — but appar­ently have a lot of torque and reach terminal velocity quickly.

Now we just need a plane ticket…

Cadillac Voyage

Monday, October 24th, 2011

Concept cars have a way of summar­ising their eras perfectly. The 1988 Voyage concept from Cadillac was a veritable riot of technology, some of it digital — at a time when widespread consumer pixelage were just about visible on the horizon for the average punter.

Its computer — controlled running gear switched from rear-​​to four-​​wheel drive when it sensed a lass of traction. It came with disc brakes with electronic anti-​​lock system, independent suspension and an electron­ically controlled automatic gearbox. There was an early ‘route-​​finding’ piece of software, orthopedically-​​designed seats that included more than 20 pneumatic and mechanical adjust­ments, three memory positions, plus back and cushion heaters with cushion massage. Just the sort of thing that exists today, in other words, with your high-​​end Mercedes.

In the way that it managed to preempt many rpoduction features that were intro­duced in the 1990s, it was an undoubted success. And we think it looked pretty damn sexy — in a kind of Gerry Anderson sort of manner.

Logan’s Run style period marketing video strikes an alarm­ingly spooky note…

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Ray Gordon - Throttled

Friday, October 7th, 2011

We really like Ray Gordon’s pictures. There’s something funda­mentally upbeat about them. They’re real. They’re cool. They’re unselfconscious.

Living tucked up in the offbeat Pacific Northwest of America, Ray has been documenting the lives of his local petrol­headed friends for a while now, as well as travelling around the country shooting all sorts of editorial and commercial work.

The car and bike culture material came together a few months back in his Portland exhib­ition Throttled.

We spoke to Ray about the work and what motivates him.

Influx: Throttled: how did the project come to be?
Ray Gordon: I have been a photo­grapher for 20 plus years and my hobby has been hot rods and motor­cycles my whole life. It was about time the two crashed into each other.

IN: V8 or V Twin?
RG: I am defin­itely a V8 guy and a British twin guy. I love cool old V twin choppers but what the V twin guys have morphed into over the years is not my thing. They seem all all be skaters or ortho­dontists. So weird.

IN: Why potography?
RG: I chose photo­graphy as a career because I suck at making music. Being a photo­grapher is the second coolest job in the world. Rock Star being the first.

IN: Why Portland?
RG: Portland is the best place in the US. A perfect mix of rednecks and liberal arty folks. I love it when they mate. Real estate is still relat­ively cheap, too, so I can fly off to LA or NY and work but then come back to Portland and my money goes further. This means I can buy 12 beers instead of six.

IN: What car/​bike do you drive?
RG: I have a 1951 Chevy Business Coupe Gasser being built by Cody at Hurst Racing Tires and a Hard Tailed late 60’s BSA Chop that Thor at See See Motorcycles is building. It sucks having 2 builds going on at once. At the moment I own large piles of really cool stuff that just isn’t on the road yet. But next summer look out!

IN What’s next?
RG:Raising my family and continuing to life my life and watch the photos make themselves.

www.raygordon.com

Drive: the movie

Thursday, September 22nd, 2011

This Friday Nicolas Winding Refn’s new movie Drive is due for UK release.

Refn won best director at this year’s Cannes film festival for the slick exist­ential thriller, which is a riff on Jean Pierre Melville’s 1967 classic le Samourai- the tale of a lone assassin.

In that broody, elliptical study, played by stone cold French idol Alain Delon there was more moody silence and long shots of silent spaces than car chases — but this offering promises plenty of crash bang and wallop for your hard-​​earned.

The film also obviously bears a resemb­lance to The Driver, too, the 1978 car chase movie that makes it onto our top ten of all time.

In Refn’s film Hollywood hottie Ryan Gosling plays a stunt performer who moonlights as a wheelman and discovers that a contract has been put on him after a heist goes badly wrong. Curvacious star of Mad Men Christina Hendricks is co star too (which will help).

Looking at the trailer there’s a lot of Mustang action, some class stunt driving and even a bit of Nascar hero worship. But what we’re excited about is the metaphoric potency of being behind the wheel examined, pretty much for the first time since the seventies.

It’s about time that an intel­ligent take on the act of driving made it back onto our screens.

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SR 500: Poetry in motion

Thursday, September 1st, 2011

More creative niceness from California here, namely Long Beach’s Lossa Engineering.

There’s a real sense of drama to this short by Ricki Bedenbaugh. The beautiful noise of the big single and the orches­tration of the soundtrack is cut together in a lovely urban rhythm.

This film has a particular piquancy, because an older cousin of ours had set our adolescent bike fantasies alight when he bought one of these big, booming singles and taunted us with his rocker cool (which didn’t seem that cool at the time).

Cuz would take the merciless mickey out of us as we watched him roar past, us slouched bored on our Raleigh Grifters.

Though he was swathed in patched denim, monkey boots and the ubiquitous RUSH t-​​shirt, and we were all about disco, boogie and Lambrettas, it was secretly the sound of the SR500 that I would ape by tucking the mudguard end over the Grifter’s rear knobbly.

The guys in Long Beach have certainly made this a much cooler bike than it ever was in its original form.