An unnamed 28-year-old driver was passing under the limb of a beech tree in the Gokayama area of Toyama Prefecture at the exact moment that the tree decided to call it quits. The driver escaped with minor injuries; which is something of a minor miracle when you see the damage to the passenger compartment in this photo.
What makes it all the more frustrating is that this tree has been identified as a potential hazard, but local historic preservation in the area barred its removal.
Artist Fabian Oefner creates the illusion of beautifully exploding machines using a combination of modelmaking, sketching, photography, and digital manipulation. They’re almost balletic in how delicately they’re presented.
The results are still arrestingly beautiful, but part of me was disappointed to see that these are more Photoshop than sculptural. How fantastic would that exploded P4 look on your mantle as a physical object in the vein of a small scale version of Jonathan Schipper’s “Slow Inevitable Death of American Muscle”? Time to break out the Testors.
Nick Brittan takes the road less traveled at the 1967 Monaco GP support race
You’ve heard me extoll the virtues of the Formula Vee racing class. I adore it for it’s simplicity: A stock VW Beetle front beam; a 1200 cc Beetle engine; and a stockish tranny. How could that not be a good time? On top of that, the grids for the vintage Vees tends to be a good spot for tight racing with skilled drafts and dramatic overtakes. Compared to this image from the support race for the 1967 Monaco GP, though, today’s Formula Vee races are positively tame. Apparently the rough and tumble formula vee racers weren’t a great cultural match with the champagne sipping Auto Club Monaco crowd and went on to prove it by opening their event with the bumping and pushing that you might expect of the unwashed.
This shot of Nick Brittan’s rather unconventional overtake near the yacht harbor chicane really probably didn’t do much to improve their reputation in the principality as evidenced by this bit from the Motoring News GP Report:
“The Formula Vee race opened proceedings and proved only that such unstable cars should not be allowed near a race track. The only British driver involved, Nick Brittan, arrived at the chicane on his first lap to find a French-driven car sideways on in front of him; he hit it and rolled, falling back on his wheels, fortunately with no personal damage.”
I’m not usually into “Crash Porn”, but this video of folks taking on the Nurburgring in their road cars demonstrates a few things: 1. road cars of the 60s and 70s were fragile and made an enormous mess when you rolled them (Except for Beetles, which look to
Green Hell, indeed.
And what’s more; the Adenauer Forest esses are still kicking people’s asses today.
