Wednesday, August 12, 2026

Singer and Louis Vuitton 911, unveiled on Wednesday at Pebble Beach, Calif., as part of Monterey Car Week,


The Porsche 911 Reimagined by Singer – Classic Turbo designed in collaboration with Nicolas Ghesquière, artistic director of women’s collections at Louis Vuitton

The conversation with Singer began with a simple request. The bespoke auto workshop, founded in 2009 by Rob Dickinson, the former frontman of English alternative rock band Catherine Wheel, wanted to commission a detachable dashboard clock based on Vuitton’s signature Tambour watch.



“In addition to the design and production of this clock by La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton workshops in Switzerland, it quickly became apparent to us that this collaboration with Singer could extend to the personalization of every functional element of the vehicle, enhancing them through our expertise in leather craftsmanship and watchmaking,” said Jean Arnault, Louis Vuitton’s watch director.



the Louis Vuitton Dolomites Classic Run is next month in September, and will mark the French luxury brand’s first classic car rally in 14 years.

 https://elitetraveler.com/motion/cars-and-bikes/louis-vuitton-singer-one-off-porsche-911-monterey-car-week

a DKW NZ 350, and the remains of two German soldiers, were recovered in Budapest because the Danube river is so low, exposing the WW2 machine

the Hungarian Institute and Museum of Military History recovered the machine on 2 August at Batthyány Square, opposite parliament. The motorcycle is almost completely intact. Because it was saturated with water and mud when it was salvaged




In recent days, further parts of the original equipment have been found in the dried-up riverbed of the Danube alongside the Wehrmacht motorcycle, including a petrol can, a Y-strap and a bayonet frog.

A Y-strap was a leather harness worn over the shoulders and joined at the front and back with additional straps. It was used to attach equipment to the body, such as bread bags, ammunition pouches or canteens. The name "Y" comes from the shape of the shoulder straps.

The mortal remains of two German soldiers were discovered beneath the motorcycle. Their fully preserved identity discs could, for the first time in more than 80 years, provide information about who they were and what happened to them

In 1932, DKW merged with Audi, Horch and Wanderer to form Auto Union AG.


https://www.euronews.com/culture/2026/08/11/striking-images-wehrmacht-motorcycle-from-danube-looks-almost-new

If you're a Tony Hawk fan, and collector... there is an upcoming auction you'll want to look through





https://www.juliensauctions.com/en/auctions/tony-hawk-unlocked

terrific cameo in the movie Eenie Meenie - Dean Winters, the actor that played "Mayhem" in the commercials for Allstate, plays a fun car dealership salesman

https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/celebrity/dean-winters-was-mayhem-way-before-he-landed-in-allstate-s-ad-campaign/ar-AA1LINwI?cvid=24197487d0ea49e4b6c9221ba5a18c03&ocid=olconob

JCB went to Bonneville and hit 406.320 with their hydrogen powered internal combustion engine streamliner, the fastest a hydrogen internal combustion engine powered vehicle has been driven, driven by Andy Green



interesting brakes! 

a 60 yr old farmer in Poland protested a road on his property, that he claims belongs to him, by hitting it with a plow for an 1/8th of a mile... but the town insists it's not on his property


https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/08/11/man-remanded-in-custody-in-poland-after-driving-tractor-onto-fresh-asphalt-and-churning-up

the National Motor Museum of British motoring at Beaulieu is at the end of it's lease and is moving

Many vehicles and artifacts to leave Montagu estate – and its monorail – in 2030, but museum won't close

The NMM Trust has announced that it won't renew its lease at Beaulieu when it comes to the end of its 60-year term in the coming years and has begun the hunt for a new site for its collection.

The Trust and the Montagu family, who still own the Beaulieu Estate, have discussed investment and redevelopment plans in line with that strategy but have concluded that the best option is to relocate the collection.

The NMM plans to find a "suitable new home" that will allow it to "share the stories of motoring heritage more widely than ever before". It also plans to develop a training center for heritage engineering apprenticeships.

The collection currently comprises around 285 vehicles. However, the Beaulieu Estate said it owns "a significant amount", which "will continue to stay" at the Hampshire site.

The Trust, founded in 1970 to take over the management of what was previously a small collection run by estate owner Lord Montagu, said the move is part of a "long-term strategy to secure the future" of the museum.

late 1950s ATV testing



the old fashioned way of doing the math on something... was a couple whiz wheels on a "computer" that would calculate


https://forestservicemuseum.pastperfectonline.com/webobject/4DC629ED-46C0-4252-8036-920519243300

Gyro-Stabilized Cargo Carrier, a 1970 Missoula Equipment Development Center project






I've seen a lot of license plates, but never one like this



An Early 60s Forest Service fire truck


scam alert, Jackson Michigan for example... has a parking law... you get 2 hours downtown free... then you get a ticket. Doesn't matter if you move the car, that does not restart the clock. This is street and parking lot (like the library) OR YOU pay 7 dollars for a daily pass


 Moving your car to a different spot or leaving and coming back does not restart the two-hour clock. Enforcement runs Monday through Friday from 8:01 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., with parking free on weekends and city holidays

here's something very cool that Marc just told me about... Hot Wheels neighborhood "Little Libraries" in Newark and Ashville Ohio (lots of residential areas in San Diego have similar bird house size book libraries)


https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=29127194360203586&set=gm.4550040521948697&idorvanity=2642861779333257

estate sales are the gold mine of cool stuff that's been hidden for decades... this original fiberglass ESSO Tiger was for sale at a July estate sale in West Hills, California




Esso was not the only company to use the tigers, they were sold to car dealerships, amusement parks, zoos and high schools as well.


made by International Fiberglass in 1966



Tuesday, August 11, 2026

the train engine from the movie The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes had an interesting engraved design, inspired by 1930s Art Deco industrial design, on the front of the enclosed casing hiding the mechanical components, reflecting the authoritarian and polished aesthetic of the early Capitol




the Chevelle in Ride or Die

 

this is new... getting a FOUO license plate frame

 


the variety of interesting Subaru license plates does not end


spotted in traffic

 

SDSU is San Diego State University. I live within walking distance of it, seeing SDSU vanity plates is not uncommon

a couple of cool scenes from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood




A 49 foot section of a worn turbine blade trucked in from a Colorado wind farm was laid across a creek in an Atlanta park, with a bridge built on it, allowing access to 2 acres previously blocked off by the river


The park is Beaverbrook Park, and the girder is a section of a retired turbine blade hauled in from a wind farm in Colorado. The piece runs about 49 feet and weighs close to 7,000 pounds. It was cut, laid on its side, bolted into concrete abutments and decked over.

A wind turbine blade is not scrap that happens to be strong. It is a cantilever beam, engineered to hold its own weight in the air and take bending load in every weather for two or three decades without cracking.

The Atlanta crossing is the third of these, and the first outside Europe. The original went in on a greenway in County Cork in January 2022, a span of about 16 feet built from two blades that once turned on small turbines, and the team counted a 20 percent reduction in carbon against the steel girders it replaced.

The words "horse" and "car" trace back to a shared Proto-Indo-European root (*ḱers-) meaning "to run," connecting the running animal to the running vehicle.

the oldest diesel-electric locomotive in the country (thank you George!)


The Illinois Railway Museum has restored perhaps the oldest bicentennial diesel locomotive in existence. 

Ingersoll-Rand 91 was the eighth production diesel locomotive ever built and was constructed in 1926 by a consortium of American Locomotive Company, General Electric and Ingersoll-Rand. 

The 300-horsepower diesel engine was perfect for low-speed switching and was sold to the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western

The boxy locomotive worked at the DL&W’s Brooklyn rail yard for a quarter century before being sold back to Ingersoll-Rand, which used it as a shop switcher in Phillipsburg, N.J., from 1951 until 1984. It was then donated to IRM. During its time at Ingersoll-Rand, the locomotive was painted in a special red, white and blue livery to celebrate the nation’s 200th birthday.

As the only locomotive at IRM to have been given a special patriotic livery for the bicentennial, I-R 91 was selected by Diesel Department volunteers for cosmetic restoration during the nation’s semiquincentennial year.

In 2005, as floodwaters overwhelmed New Orleans and evacuation efforts struggled to keep up, 20yr old Jabbar Gibson found an abandoned school bus and took action

 
He filled it with people desperate to escape... And drove toward Houston.

For nearly 13 hours, he navigated flooded streets, damaged roads, and the chaos left behind by the hurricane, determined to get everyone to safety.

When the bus finally reached the Houston Astrodome, Gibson and more than 70 evacuees had made it out.

Reports said they arrived before many official evacuation buses.

Gibson's story became one of Hurricane Katrina's most powerful examples of ordinary people stepping up when others were still waiting for help.

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1491330286373071&set=a.634745218698253

1961 DAF garbage truck, in the daf museum, Netherlands, was called a rolling drum; compacting garbage by gravity, According to Geesink’s website, their rolling drum was introduced in the late thirties.