One of a kind flying saucer Chipotle and Starbucks in St. Louis. Originally built in 1967 as a Phillip 66 gas station.

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1836894433966670&set=gm.27543552208630468&idorvanity=353785941367129

 

A group of students from Italy’s University of Pisa built the largest paper airplane with paper and some glue, 23-foot-long and 65-foot wingspan

“In the end we managed to bring back to Italy a world record that had stood for thirteen years,” the team added.

https://www.popsci.com/science/worlds-largest-paper-airplane

Gustave Eiffel's masterpiece before the Eiffel Tower was built, was this bridge in Portugal built in 1877

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/maria-pia-bridge

interesting new helmet design from Roof, the Djagger

https://www.rideapart.com/news/783166/roof-djagger-prototype-folding-motorcycle-helmet-ems-access/

https://www.autoevolution.com/news/roof-s-latest-djagger-motorcycle-helmet-is-a-must-see-one-of-the-coolest-ever-but-is-it-safe-270272.html

this isn't AI, this is a real train in Japan designed by a former Nissan car designer, Tetsuo Fukuda, The Twilight Express Mizukaze.

https://japanesenostalgiccar.com/twilight-express-mizukaze-japans-luxury-train/

https://www.twilightexpress-mizukaze.jp/en/about/train/cars.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight_Express_Mizukaze

skip the first minute (as always)

The Howard DGA-6 was a pioneer racing plane, and the only airplane ever designed for the specific purpose of winning the Bendix Trophy.

The plane was designed and developed by Ben Howard and Gordon Israel, who later became an engineer for the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation. 

https://www.facebook.com/steelwheelskevin/posts/pfbid02gXRjPwhqzrpeRLgdn5rGXXssJSw7qB8Hv56GHwn7KzRsgbjXgqggHQJsGZ8hhLN2l

the Daily Timewaster finds some really cool stuff, the YB-35, YB-49 and the B-2

https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/ey4uc5/the_evolution_of_the_b2_the_yb35_yb49_and_the_b2/#lightbox

 https://dailytimewaster.blogspot.com/2026/04/the-yb-35-yb-49-and-b-2-bombers.html

when 1986 Daytona 500 winner Geoff Bodine was invited to visit the Lake Placid Olympic training center in the early ‘90s he became fascinated by the bobsleds. In 1992 he founded Bo-Dyn Bobsled Project, Inc. In 2002, they won silver and bronze, in 2010, they made the fastest sled in the world, and won gold

  After hearing how the US was an also-ran entrant in the sport using borrowed technology from Europe, Geoff decided to bring his chassis designer Bob Cuneo ( I wonder if he is related to Terence or Joan? https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/search?q=cuneo  ) in to see how they could create the next level sled and lead the US to success.

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=26038459269127880&set=pcb.26038459655794508
https://usopm.org/from-the-racetrack-to-the-winter-games-building-a-better-bobsled/

With Bo-Dyn technology, the U.S. won silver and bronze for the four-man race in 2002 but still lacked that little something extra to top the podium. 

After another eight years of cutting-edge innovation and development, the Bo-Dyn Bobsled Project unveiled “Night Train,” a $250,000 state-of-the-art American-made bobsled. Dubbed the fastest sled in the world

These advancements proved so successful that European teams began bidding for the sleds, a complete turn-of-the-table from the imported European sleds of the early ’90’s.

Bodine refused. “The money was dangled out in front of us to see if we would cave in and sell some of our equipment, but we said no,” said Bodine. “We didn’t do it for profit. We did it for our American athletes and no one else.”

in 2010, the U.S. Olympic Men’s Bobsled Team won its first gold medal since 1948, ending a 62-year drought

The push team included a New York Army National Guardsman, and a biological systems engineering PhD and middle linebacker for the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers.

(I've already touched on Olympic bob sled teams recruiting exceptional football athletes https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2024/09/you-never-know-what-youre-going-to-find.html when I met Justin Orr, 2010 Olympics Bob Sled team)

https://www.npr.org/2010/01/14/122580366/u-s-sled-team-struggles-after-setbacks

a unique rumble seat design on a 1926 Rolls, that I've never seen before; a two panel seat, where one lifts up for the seat back, and the panel between that and the cabin, pivots upside down to be the seat of the ruble seat, and seat arms.

see the video at https://www.facebook.com/reel/956771107095327

an alternative way to get the back wheel turning... I wonder if it didn't result in being the normal design due to efficiency, or the gears grinding from dust and dirt, or chewing on pant legs

https://f30.bimmerpost.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1987655&page=18

i am IMPRESSED with the new features in the EBY cattle trailer

Skip the 1st 14 minutes to get to the trailer, skip to 15:30 to get to the slam gate. That's one sweet user friendly gate!

Skip to 18:00 to see what's impressed me the most, the slam gate with slider door

It's a hell of a nice design! 

I love the new advancements in design of tailgates... that's what I first noticed, then, I looked at the edition

 

Wow, original design art from Fleetwood (thank you Doug! )

The aristocratic-sounding Fleetwood, which came to epitomize fine automotive design throughout the world, had humble beginnings not in some lordly English village, but rather a small town between Kutztown and Reading where autos were custom-built for the likes of Mary Pickford, Rudolph Valentino, the Emperor of Japan, Italian noblemen and an Indian Prince.

Cadillac stopped manufacturing its largest flagship model bearing the proud Fleetwood nameplate after the 1996 model year

https://www.coachbuild.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2423&p=134883&sid=b4e1f876f9a4ac62d47ab58ef9b96a32#p134883 

1924 Lanchester 40HP Coronation Coach made for the Sir Jai Prabhakar Singh, Maharaja of the 15 gun salute state of Alwar. so popular that it was featured in the American magazine ‘Popular Mechanics’ of October 1924.

He ruled the State from 1892 until 1933, when he was exiled by the Britsh Government. The car was so popular that it was featured in ‘Popular Mechanics’ of October 1924.

https://crankhandleblog.com/articles/the-indian-lanchester-car-hype/

https://forums.aaca.org/topic/341211-period-images-to-relieve-some-of-the-stress/page/52/

that cool clockwork train from the movie Wicked is now able to be viewed on You Tube, in hi def. I dig this art deco design!

Skip the first 30 seconds, and then again to get past the scenes where the acting is going on, unfortunately they didn't edit a video for just scenes of the train. 

By the way, the train isn't public transportation, it's only for guests of the Wizard to use to get a ride at his request. 

Robert Moses, a prominent 20th-century NYC planner, intentionally designed overpasses on the Southern State Parkway at a low height that busses couldn't pass under, because this would prevent low income bus riders from getting to Jones beach

This tactic in the late 1920s while FDR was the governor, was aimed at restricting access to public, city-funded beaches, enforcing segregation through, rather than of, infrastructure.

Allegedly some critics have argued that Moses utilized various urban planning techniques to disrupt Black and Latino communities, including constructing highways directly through these neighborhoods, such as the Cross Bronx Expressway. In order to build the Southern State, many Long Island farmers were either forced off their land or required to sell portions of their farms.

The overpass bridges were made infamous in Robert A. Caro’s monumental 1974 biography of Robert Moses, The Power Broker, who modernized Gotham for the motor age, though Moses never learned to drive. 

In one of the 1,300-page, Pulitzer-winning book's most memorable passages, Caro reveals that Moses ordered his engineers to build the bridges low over the parkway to keep buses from the city away from Jones Beach—buses presumably filled with the poor blacks and Puerto Ricans Moses despised.

Caro described Moses as “the most racist human being I had ever really encountered.” The evidence is legion: minority neighborhoods bulldozed for urban renewal projects

Thomas J. Campanella, a professor at Cornell University, a historian and a writer on city planning and the urban environment, sees the potential evidence of discrimination in the lower height of the Southern State bridges compared with those on other parkways Moses designed.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-09/robert-moses-and-his-racist-parkway-explained

https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/Q096/highlights/12650

https://archive.pinupmagazine.org/articles/jones-beach-robert-moses-segregation-design#17

https://www.bunkhistory.org/resources/the-true-measure-of-robert-moses-and-his-racist-bridges

https://www.liherald.com/elmont/stories/southern-state-parkway-divided-legacy,214799?

https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/articles/issues/3/technology-sometimes-falls-short/50332/talking-about-devious-design

memorable designs Alan H. Leamy created while working for E.L. Cord

Closed coachwork for the L-29 was designed by Leamy and Auburn’s John Oswald while the designs for the cabriolet and phaeton were supplied by one of Walter M. Murphy’s in-house designers, most likely Franklin Q. Hershey.

http://www.coachbuilt.com/des/l/leamy/leamy.htm

what a striking looking Cadillac

https://forums.aaca.org/topic/341211-period-images-to-relieve-some-of-the-stress/page/271/

this car ought to get shown around in geometry class, 1914 Delauany Belleville 6 cylinder

back when it wasn't crazy to bring along 4 spare tires. 

https://forums.aaca.org/topic/341211-period-images-to-relieve-some-of-the-stress/page/394/

way back when horse shoe nails were loose everywhere and repairing a flat happened all the time. The license plate is 1911

https://forums.aaca.org/topic/341211-period-images-to-relieve-some-of-the-stress/page/389/

It's great that we normally wear the tread right off tires now, without getting a flat.