The Dork-O-Motive Podcast

This is the story of the fastest car in the world in 1906. The first car to exceed 120mph and a machine that destroyed the most decorated field of automotive competition ever assembled to that point in history...and it ran on steam.

The accomplishments of this short lived racing marvel are huge in the history of the automobile. The speed record it set stood as the outright automotive land speed record for four years. I

t held the s...

Ford's foray into the Indy 500 in the 1960s is a motorsports story for the ages. In 1963 the company used a pushrod engine derived from their successful 260ci small block V8. After nearly winning the race with that effort, engineers were turned loose to build the ultimate version of the engine.

What they designed was dual overhead camshaft, 255ci V8 that made peak power at 8,000 RPM, was tested to within an inch of its life, and ar...

He's a man who have likely never heard of, Serop "Setto" Postoian, an early top fuel master who helped to make Don Garlits. Postoian was among the earliest stars in a young sport.

Motivated, fearless, and every bit the match for the man who would eventually become known as the greatest drag racer of all time. The rivalry between Garlits and Postoian in the early days of top fuel drag racing was contested across the nation.

They wer...

This is a look back, 90+ years back into the history of speed to check out the exploits and impact of the amazing racing tractors created by the Allis-Chalmers company in the 1930s that literally changed the world by racing and chasing land speed records.

These were the first tractors with rubber inflatable tires and that changed the farming game as well as entertained millions of fans over the course of five years in the 1930s. T...

This is the story of how early drag racers developed the clutch technology that has ultimately lead to the engineering wonders in today's 11,000hp top fuel dragsters and nitro funny cars. It is the story of experimentation, of failure, of accidents, and of success.

The development of the multi-disc, centrifugally controlled clutch was incremental in all areas. From the materials, the design, and finally the manufacture of these pi...

When the Hurricane of 1938 struck New England, it was a disaster of proportions unknown to the region at that point. No storm in modern history had wrought more destruction or devastation than that one.

Beyond the cities and towns, past the population centers, there was another looming nightmare...the forests. Nearly 1,000 square miles of New England Pine Forest were blown down, placing nearly 2 billion board feet in logs and lumbe...

There are few stories in the history of drag racing that can compare to that of Alfred Gordon Fenn, known as Scotty.

He was a visionary and created the first commercial dragster chassis business in the world circa 1958, but his life story goes far, far beyond that. For the first time ever, learn the back story, learn the success story, his precipitous fall in the sport, and how he managed to continue his career for years after peop...

He was a man with dozens of patents to his name, the designer of the first four cylinder car in America, the first eight cylinder car, and the first V-8 production car, but have you ever heard of him?

The answer is no.

H.H. Buffum was a genius engineer of the late 1800s and early 1900s. He made a fortune making equipment for the shoe manufacturing industry and then turned his attention to cars. Take this fascinating ride back int...

This is the in-depth history of what I believe to be the greatest heavy duty truck of the second world war. The M26 tank retriever was a machine designed with armor, with an engine of 1,090ci, with brute strength, and above all, with loads of practical engineering built in.

The truck out-performed every other rig in this role worldwide and was just beyond cool. With nearly 1,400 produced between 1942 and 1945, many still exist toda...

It's a stunning thing to realize that Ford mass-produced an 1,100ci, dual overhead camshaft, alunimum block, flat plane crank V8 in the 1940s. Sill the largest mass produced V8 engine ever, it was just what Uncle Sam needed to power Sherman tanks.

But how did it come about? In this video we not only look at the awesome specs and mechanical feats that this engine is known for, we also look into its murky and wild history.

A history ...

This is the story of one of the greatest minds in the history of the sport of drag racing. Lew Russell Robinson known more widely as "Sneaky Pete" Robinson was an innovator without equal in the 1960s. He approached the sport as a trained engineer from Georgia Tech and took that education to speeds and performance unknown for his time.

He was the type of guy they write rules to slow down, to save from themselves and to prevent lesse...

The Indy 500 has long been recognized as one of the most amazing hot beds of racing innovation in history. The 1966 race saw a car that may well stand as one of the most unique, inventive, and downright odd of the era. The Stein-Valvoline Special was a twin Porsche engined, four wheel drive, California garage built machine from the mind of a former midget racing champion and his friends.

The story of this car, its driver, and th...