Past Gas

Detroit has always been the beating heart of American car culture. But how did crisis after crisis nearly destroy not only its industry, but the city itself? You’ve probably seen photos of Detroit’s urban ruins and wondered what happened. Today on Past Gas, we’ll give you the whole story, and how the city’s history is inseparable from the history of American cars built by Ford, Chevy, and GM. How...

Today on Past Gas, the Indy 500 of 1964. We’re giving you the whole story of the year they red flagged one of the most famous races in the world. What made it one of the most awful days in racing history? Who was to blame? And how did it effect the future of racing, in Indy and beyond? Light up your cigs and don’t buckle your seatbelt, ’cause your car doesn’t have one. It’s 1964 and we’re hitting...

Today on Past Gas, CAR HEISTS! Turns out that Grand Theft Auto isn’t just a video game-- it’s a crime. We bring you eight insane true stories about stolen cars, from Guy Fieri’s yellow Lambo to the biggest bank robbery of all time. What were the craziest heists? The boldest? The dumbest? Gun it baby, the fuzz are right behind us! Today’s episode of Past Gas is positively criminal. Thanks to our sp...

Group B. The Golden Age of Rally Racing. It’s safe to say that auto racing will never again be this fast, thrilling, and dangerous. The most iconic battle of Group B was in 1983, when the beefy 4WD Audi Quattro faced off against the stylin’ Italian rear-wheel drive Lancia 037. Who prevailed in what many consider to be the greatest rally battle of all time? You gotta listen to today’s Past Gas to f...

Today on Past Gas, it’s Barn Finds, PART TWO! How did a pair of Citroen prototypes wind up on the roof of a French barn? How does an ultra-rare Shelby Daytona vanish for decades after breaking a slew records? What does it take for an entire car dealership to vanish into history? What happens when one of the most famous Mustangs of all time turns up in a Mexican junkyard? All that and more on today...

Here at Past Gas, we can’t get enough of car flops. How do bad cars get designed and approved? What makes a car a failure? How would you feel if you had a car NAMED after you that is now literally a crossword answer for “automotive failure”? Today on the podcast, James, Nolan, and Joe tell you the story of the Ford Edsel, a car built by committee that nobody wanted to buy. Except maybe Nolan-- lis...

Today on Past Gas, we’re zooming in on a single year of Formula One-- one that saw the loss of a legend and the birth of a new superstar. We can often point to one year that shapes us-- whether it be through hardship, hard-won victory, or both. For F1, that year was 1994. It’s a gut-wrenching season that changed the sport forever, and today on the podcast we give you the whole story. What were the...

Beating Nazis in a racecar sounds like the plot of a ’90s action movie-- but it’s actually straight out of real life. Today on Past Gas, the story of how a band of determined outsiders, led by Lucy Schell, prevailed over Hitler in Formula racing, infuriating the Fuhrer and handing him a defeat even more humiliating than his art school rejection letters (for real). It’s an underdog car story for th...

Only three drivers have won in Formula One, Indy Car, NASCAR, and Sports Cars. Dan Gurney was the first. Gurney was like the Forrest Gump of cars in the ‘60s and ‘70s, everywhere at once, racing incredible Carroll Shelby designed cars-- then designing cars of his own that won countless events. He’s a guy James WISHES he could be-- the “coolest dude in cars”-- once nominated by Car and Driver to be...

Stunt driving is full of fearless, borderline crazy people. Today on Past Gas, we’re talking about possibly the craziest stunt man of them all. A guy whose stunt was so reckless, even Evel Knievel took a pass. Ken Carter, aka the Mad Canadian, had a dream to jump a mile over a river, in a rocket-powered Lincoln Continental. What would you risk for glory? How dangerous is too dangerous? That and mo...

Today on Past Gas-- the troubled history of tobacco and racing. How and why did a major tobacco company exist without selling any products or services-- while still serving as the title sponsor for the Scuderia Ferrari Formula One team? How did a cigarette company play a key role in building the NASCAR empire? And how did a former CEO of Marlboro Cigarettes become the head of both Ferrari and Ferr...

Does anything symbolize the promise of the future like flying cars? From Star Wars to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, from The Jetsons to James Bond, flying cars have captured our imagination, but failed to translate into any sort of reality. Will flying cars ever be safe and practical enough to happen? How would they work? Flying cars always seem right around the corner, but can advancements in battery...

Today on Past Gas—why the ’90s was the golden age of supercars! The lightning fast McLaren F1, the objectively sexy Lamborghini Diablo, and the very weird and very amazing Vector W8—are just a few, of the many 90’s exotics, that made our list. How did Muscle Cars pave the path for modern exotics? And what made this era of supercars, ‘super’ special? Join James, Nolan, and Joe, as we turn back the...

Before Gamestop revolutionized the world of stonks, there was… Volkswagen. Over a decade before Reddit made GME a meme, one of the craziest short squeezes in history involved VW and Porsche. How did VW briefly become the most valuable company in the world? And how did it all go down in flames. On today’s episode of Past Gas, we’re trading in the short shifter for the short squeeze. It’s time to ta...

The world renowned Camel Trophy—one of the most brutal adventure driving events, and the ultimate proving grounds for Land Rover’s off-road capability. Crossing jungles and desert, from the Amazon to Borneo, Sumatra to New Guinea, this event was considered to be the “The Olympics of 4x4.” Drivers flocked to the competition, applicants chosen over a  million  applicants worldwide. The event was not...

Ford and Firestone started as automotive BFFs. The relationship between the two companies-- as well as two wealthy families-- lasted over a century. But starting in the ’80s, a series of disastrous business decisions led to hundreds of lives being lost, and the end of Ford and Firestone working together. What was the human toll, and how did the companies avoid responsibility? Today on Past Gas, th...

If you’ve seen the movie Rush, you know the name Niki Lauda. The coldly competitive Austrian F1 driver was most known for his rivalry with British James Hunt, and his horrific crash at the Nurburgring. But who is the man behind the legend? Is he a Terminator, a Rat, or a misunderstood genius who was the first truly technical driver in F1? Today on Past Gas, how a man of steel gave F1 one of its gr...

On January 1, 1959, the government of California tried to kill the lowrider movement. But their efforts backfired-- instead giving rise to a golden age of cars that bounced and tilted like magic. Lowriders became a protest movement on wheels. How did conflicts between lowriders and the cops play out? How are lowriders connected to the history of Chicano culture in the US? And who are the modders a...

Remember toy fads like pogs and silly bandz? The ’60s version was Snake and Mongoose, two real life drag racers who got immortalized in diecast form by Mattel. Don “The Snake” Prudhomme and Tom “The Mongoose” McEwen were elite drag racers, but they also became pop culture icons as drag racing reached peak popularity. Who won more races? Why were people going so far as to get Snake and Mongoose tat...

Back in the 1870s, Bertha Benz was married to a penniless engineer named Karl Benz. What happened to Karl is now part of German automotive legend-- but Bertha had a crazy part to play in the Benz saga. Today on Past Gas, the story of Bertha Benz’s Big Ride, a 65 mile trek on a Benz Patent Motorwagen through the rugged, treacherous terrain of the Rhine Valley. Along the way, Bertha addressed mechan...

Colin McRae’s motto was “if in doubt, flat out.” This week on Past Gas, we’ll talk about what came next for Colin McRae after winning the WRC, as he continued to race rally, helped launch the most popular rally video game ever, and helped build a legacy that would one day come to an abrupt and tragic end. As a testament to his life, James, Joe, and Nolan will answer the question, once and for all-...

Colin McRae’s motto was “if in doubt, flat out.” Today on Past Gas, we take a look at the Flying Scotsman and how he ruthlessly applied a “flat out” strategy to rally racing, transforming the sport and winning himself millions of fans. Why did Colin get into a shouting match with Subaru teammates on the cusp of winning a world title? What were the most spectacular wipeouts from a driver who was so...

Just a year before WWII, a 28 year old German driver named Bernd Rosemeyer crashed while driving over 260 miles per hour on a public road, killing him instantly. Just a few years earlier, Rosemeyer had been a humble mechanic, working at his dad’s garage. But now, he was part of a Hitler-funded racing program-- a violent effort to make Nazis the fastest drivers in the world. Today on Past Gas, the...

Join Nolan, James and Joe as they explore one of the earliest and most dangerous races to ever exist - a race halfway across the globe, through countless countries and environments. From the muddy mountains of China to the Gobi Desert in Mongolia, and that's only the start of it! How they survived, we know not. What we do know is that this is one of the craziest stories ever told. As a listener, y...

Today on Past Gas, we tell the story of Genora Johnson, and a fearless group of women, who helped to organize workers and defeat one of the largest companies in the world-- General Motors. GM once ruled the town of Flint with an iron fist, but employees were fed up with perilous conditions and low pay. The workers took to the streets, but protests quickly turned violent. What were the dangers invo...