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 Cafe 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.

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?

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…

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…

Click here to view the embedded video.

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

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.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In case you’ve been buried under a rock these past years, you can’t help have noticed that there’s a real Hot Rod revival going on, with vintage events cropping up all over the place.

Core festivals like the Hayride are becoming more and more popular – and the forties and fifties are becoming the decades referenced by the most creative recyclers of culture.

And amid a subculture that lives and breathes on heritage brands, there’s something about those Moon eyes.
We hate using the word, but this brand really is iconic.

Great timing then, for French– based connoisseur of Rod Culture Laurent Bagnard to bring out a book that delves into the venerable archive of the Moon’s brand history.

Dean Moon, born in 1927, was one of the genuine pioneers of Hot Rodding, and built a company that became synonymous with the coolest bolt– on accessories, particularly those foot– shaped gas pedals (with five toes and all) those matt silver moon disc wheel trims.

But while these very visible trinkets probably made the company most of their money, Mr. Moon was apparently responsible for hopping up many successful dragsters and Bonneville rides.

In the sixties, according to the author Moon– equipped engines were even known to make it into Formula one cars.

The book is sure to become a must-have for the car culture geek.

www.coolnout.com

Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT
Wires have reported that the 2012 version of the top-of-the-range Jeep is set to feature a 6.4 litre Hemi V8, 500 HP and an eight-speed gearbox. The current version is amazingly refined for an American SUV — so with tech figures like this this may be a Cayenne Turbo beater for a quantum of the price. It looks better than the Cayenne too.

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Cadillac CTS Coupé
From a purely design-focused perspective Caddy’s latest coupé is a further step away from its wool-died image as purveyor of ostentatious rides for fat American cats. It may look wrought in pixels but In the supercharged CTS V8 form it’s an –all-American brute. See it in the steel and it may even attract you away from the German and Japanese competition.

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Chevrolet Camaro SS
When you meet one of these you can’t help but notice the Hasbro connection. Along with the Mustang this is probably the most authentic of the rebooted muscle Marys, but somehow the very American futurism encoded in its design really looks like it’s about to transform into an Autobot and save the world. And that’s why we like it.

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Ford F150
The best selling truck in American history is in its current manifestation looks great. Ford even claim a dizzying 23 MPG on the highway! With the crew cab and the relatively low retail price it’s a true alternative to those ubiquitous but dull Jap competitors. If you car about automotive steez and have heavy duty transport requirements, this might be a goer.

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Tesla Roadster 2.5
Despite rumours of the company’s financial troubles and how difficult it would be to live with, the Tesla company boldly created enough energy and debate on the viability of EVs to wake a world out of complacency. Press the boot for instant torque, hurtle into a corner with no engine noise and judge your braking — then tell us if this isn’t a new driving experience to be championed.

[Show as slideshow]

Pics Dom Romney/Influx

//The Location//
There’s a strange sort of irony in picking up the latest Corvette Grand Sport from the centre of the Industrial revolution’s Eden. Venerable dealer Bauer Millet – who specialise in all sorts of Euro exotica as well as Americana – are situated underneath the arches, right in the heart of central Manchester.

The location is the quintessence of New Britain. Conference centres, swish boutiques and cafés now sit amid the dark Satanic mills, bridges, canals and institutional edifices that are the sweatshops of the digital age.

You’ll still find folk wandering up and down these gentrified streets humming metaphorically the theme tune from Corrie. But Manchester feels more European than London these days – and there’s more quietly humming trams about than rumbling V8s.

On the day we drive the Corvette a pall of black smoke rises from somewhere in the city centre. More looting? I try a mental calculation as to whether fibreglass burns easily.

Click here to view the embedded video.

//The Car//
The orginal, 1963 Corvette Grand Sport was the end result of a factory mission to compete and win at classic venues like Sebring and Le Mans – and to add another name to a roster of American victors headed up by Carrol Shelby.

But the project, set into motion by chief engineer Zora Duntov, hadn’t been sanctioned by the GM board and was Kiboshed – but not before a handful of lightweight machines with a 6.2 litre small block V8 and all-round disc brakes were produced. All five of the originals are still in existence, each worth millions apiece.

So while a huge amount of energy in the American motor industry is looking toward alternative futures, the current Corvette Grand Sport is an echo of the past that resonated with the best of contemporary tech. But it’s not just the name and the badge that echoes Corvette’s past glories. Genuine research and technology have gone into this flagship of Yankee pride.

There’s electronic launch control with the short throw six speed manual box; there’s variable-ratio steering, which allows a mix of sharp –turn-ins and straight-line stability; there’s a relatively unobtrusive electronic handling system that makes the best of available grip – and can of course be switched off easily when you want to cut loose. Corvettes, too, were among the first production cars to offer magnetic selective ride control that assesses road surface conditions on the move and adjusts damping accordingly.

Under the hood there’s the most powerful standard Corvette engine that has ever been produced – a 6.2 litre LS3 V8 which is a direct descendent of the small block engine that originally appeared in the 1963 version of the GS. There’s an array of track-derived features in this baby, including a high-lift cam, and a high flow intake manifold and cylinder heads. The result is a super-reliable 437 Horsepower package with 575 NM of torque. GM reckons there’s a whacking 100,000 miles between major services on these engines – but they don’t choose to highlight this claim on the Corvette. With this brand-within-a-brand the marketing is all about performance, heritage and experience.

//The Experience//
When you first encounter the Grand Sport you can feel that there’s something ‘un-American’ about it. Not that this is some subversive pinko o a car. The original from 1963 looked and felt as if it were aspiring to a kind of European aesthetic that Shelby and his Cobras downright ignored. On this car there’s something about the light clusters, the positioning of the cooling intakes and the low, road-hoovering stance that owes more to the drawings of Pininfarina and Bertone than the boxish brutalism of American muscle.

The type and the nomenclature obviously keep reminding you of the car’s all-American heritage, but it’s a refreshingly outward looking, East Coast sort of Americana.

This Corvette is, after all, a relative lightweight contender with a curb weight of a little over 1500KG (only 20KG heavier) Ferrari’s 458. This is mainly to do with that trademark composite shell – and driving over the cobbles of Manchester you can see its wings quivering with the effort.

We’re loving the short throw gearbox (and don’t believe that any ‘Vette should come with flappy paddles, which are available if you so desire). The limited enthusiastic driving we were able to do availed us of the right amount of oversteer and grunt through those huge rear wheels.

Bury your boot and it’s pleasantly torquey and easy to fishtail through the gears – but the package, especially when switched to the more sedate touring mode, makes the car usable, even dignified. Visibility with the top down feels surprisingly good and the clutch requires no monster thigh action.

In fact, the whole drive feels very user friendly with satisfying slush-box clunks and fluid engagements. The one annoyance is the relatively convoluted stopping and starting sequence, which requires you to select reverse before leaving the car – and to switch off the intrusion sensor you have to reach over to the glove box and flick a switch. Irritating when you’re in and out of the car as we were, but probably less so when involved in day-to-day use.

//The Verdict//
We’re impressed. The thing about Corvettes is that they represent the sort of Americana that has always looked to Europe for its aesthetic inspiration. If you’re after the sort of high-octane swagger and design brutalism that characterises muscle cars – the Corvette isn’t it. If however, you’re after something that harnesses the glory of big V8 engines and marries that with some impressive tech, then this may be your answer.

Thanks to Mitch @ Bauer Millett