The Motoring Historian

#4 Route 66, Roadtrips and the Third Wall


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J attends the International Motor Racing Research Center Conference on Motor Sport History


  • J breaks down the Third Wall
  • Watkins Glen road course, and Big Bend
  • Just Go Drive revisited
  • Bringing hobbyists and academics together; Conference attendees; Don Capps, the case of confusing Maserati serial numbers; Lord Brockett
  • IMRRC Conference Live Stream
  • Fireball Roberts and Smokey Yunick’s Catalina; did it have a supercharger? Is there an upside to investigating cheating in NASCAR?
  • J’s preso - the power of YouTube for motorsport history; anyone can do history, the sources are there for everyone to research; Allan Grice in Europe; the rise and rise of YouTube car guys like Hoovie
  • Midget and sprint car dirt oval racing in the San Francisco Bay Area; Joe Leonard, of Racemaker Press
  • The crossover between Motor Racing and Rock and Roll


The Drive Home, along Route 66: 

  • M and J’s Roadtrip Experience in the mid nineties in our ‘79 Lincoln Town Car
  • Route 66 exploration and found it in spades - hundreds of bypassed town, thousands of abandoned cars, derelict buildings; a sense of the continual evolution of the road; 1926, and the designation of Route 66, was just one iteration of the continually evolving road west; more like The Ridgeway than the M1
  • Cadillac Ranch vs. Stone Henge
  • Cannonballing vs. low speed
  • M’s vacation explorations of the American West, by Mustang V8 rental


Quick Fire:

  • Favourite YouTube channel at the moment?
  • Favourite car or bike at the moment?
  • Most scared you've ever been in a car or on a bike?


Miles Collier’s The Archaeological Automobile. Cars as art. If you care even slightly about cars, buy it.

Sherlock Holmes and the Cthulhu Casebooks

Plug of our satirical Dungeons and Dragons novels, The Chronicles of Halvar and Clarence, and hence our sponsorship of 44teeth’s Mike Booth


San Francisco City College’s Motorcycle courses reinstated

M’s discursive analysis of Ewok society

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The Motoring HistorianBy Jonathan Summers