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DAF began in 1928 as a small garage. By 1949, they started manufacturing trucks and trailers. Their success led to the production of cars. The idea was to builda small affordable “luxury” car with an automatic transmission similar to that in a Buick Dynaflow. The problem was that such a transmission was too big, too […]

Here is an unassuming-looking Volvo 142 that has been modified for racing, and is raced by Jeff Lane.  SCCA created the “Improved Touring (IT) class” race cars in the late 1980s.   This class is meant to be an entry-level racing class – the cars have to be at least five years old, and only

Hans Trippel is known as the man who designed the Amphicar. Before the Amphicar, he designed the Weidner Condor. The Condor was presented to the public at the 1957 Geneva Auto Show. It was built by farm equipment manufacturers Fritz and Reinhold Weidner. The body, provided by the Binz factory, is made of the most

Zündapp is one of the best-known makes of German motorcycles. The company’s first car was in 1931 and it was Ferdinand Porche’s design for a “people’s car.” They concentrated on motorcycles until 1956 when production began on an unusual microcar designed by aircraft-builder Claudius Dornier. As you can see, this car has two doors and

The Twini Mini was an idea that was never fully developed. In 1962, British Motor Corporation built a Mini Moke with 2 engines to help its off-road capabilities. It was hugely successful as an experimental vehicle, and when John Cooper visited BMC and drove the vehicle, he was impressed. Cooper envisioned a “Twini Mini” for

Morris Motor Company was started in the 1920s and established a reputation for reliable family cars. In the 1950s, Morris merged with its old rival Austin to form British Motor Corp. Economic factors in the UK in the mid-1950s made the creation of “a proper miniature car” a priority, and BMC assigned a small team

Sir Alec Issigonis designed the Mini, which became one of the best selling cars in Europe and one of the most recognized cars ever produced. This car defined Issigonis’ philosophy “less is more.” Mini production started in August 1959 and was an instant success. This small British car originally came with an 850cc engine but

This 1969 Austin Mini has been updated to mid-1980 specification. Although Austin never produced an in-house cabriolet, several independent companies in England performed the conversions. The steel reinforcements welded to the bottom of the sills were intended to help increase the body strength, but the reality is there is still a lot of chassis flex.

This “car” was built from body parts taken from a 1975 Mini, skillfully “shrunken” to approximately 2/3 the size of a “real” Mini. The body is all steel, and the time to fabricate it was over 400 hours, or about 10 weeks of full-time labor! It is not fully complete, as one can see by