The morning started as a casual remote at Houston’s Back to the Past car show and turned into a deep dive into 1910 luxury on wheels. We met Lee Brown and his extraordinary Bianchi limousine, a Milan-built brass-era time capsule that still runs, still turns heads, and still asks you to earn every mile. From bevel glass and flower vases to a chauffeur’s exposed perch, the car lays out a social map of the Edwardian world where aristocrats rode in comfort and drivers braved the elements.
We walk through the car’s astonishing details and the rituals that bring it to life: five oil lamps, dual acetylene generators for the headlamps, a single electric dome light powered by a glass jar battery, and a hand-crank start that includes pressurizing the fuel tank and priming each cylinder. Under the bonnet, a magneto-fired, single casting four-cylinder shows the state of early engine design, while a flyball speedometer driven off the driveshaft measures speed without a single chip or wire. With the factory archives lost to WWII bombings, restoration means detective work—disassembling, learning, and erring on the safe side with lubrication and setup. It’s preservation as practice, not a checkbox.
We also map out five standout Renaissance festivals worth a fall road trip, from Maryland and Minnesota to the massive Texas Renaissance Festival in Todd Mission, plus a quick-hit events calendar and a notable industry fraud case. The thread tying it all together is culture on wheels: how cars store memory, how communities gather around craft, and how old machines still teach us patience, precision, and joy.
If stories like this move you, hit follow, share with a friend, and leave a review telling us your favorite pre-war car detail or myth—we might feature it next week.
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