The Dork-O-Motive Podcast

The most monstrous WWII aircraft engine that you have never heard of is called the Studebaker XH-9350. A truly mind boggling project that Studebaker was the last option for when it began in 1942, it's an engine that would have been unmatched in aviation history had it been completed. Designed as an H-layout, it was to displace 9,350ci and make north of 5,000hp on gasoline. The engine was almost 10...

Cummins diesel engines are an American institution. They've been one of the most massive manufacturers of diesel engines in the United States for more than 100 year now, but did you that they have an incredible history in racing, tied to the Indy 500. From 1931-1952 Cummins ran five different cars with five different engines at the 500 and all of them are amazing. Cummins is credited for more Indy...

This is the story of how a 1979 AMC AMX won its class at the 1979 24 Hours of the Nurburgring. Not only that, how it was done with two hastily built cars, a group of six drivers that included a Hollywood star, and how they did it all on street tires. Oh, they also had a one armed German driving instructor. Not all publicity stunts are made the same and this video will be proof of that. In this cas...

Incredibly, nitro powered drag racing nearly didn't survive the 1970s. It is a story often lost to modern history but it's a harrowing tale of shortages, price escalation, racer intervention, and the survival instincts of racers in Top Fuel and Nitro Funny Car. In this podcast we examine the tumultuous decade that saw performances escalate, star power grow, and in the end, the sport brought to its...

It was late 1956 and craftsmen in Turin were thrashing to complete the latest, mosrt beautiful, and most complex project they had ever done for Chrysler. It was a concept car called The Norseman and it was both an exceptional design and a near impossible build. After missing its first shipping date, the job was finished a month later and the car ewas hurriedly placed on the Italian luxury liner An...

The story of drag racing is typically seen as one defined by insane horsepower. The super fuels, the massive blowers, the acceleration that is unmatched by any wheel driven vehicle on Earth.   But that actually isn't the root of the story.   The real foundation of it all? Traction. And where did that come from? It came from tire shops at first. Taking old passenger car tires and gluing more rubber...

f there is a story in American motorsports history more compelling than Micke Thompson versus the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, I am not sure what it is. The man conquered everything in his path over the course of a titanic career, except Indy. His ideas were wild, his concepts extreme, his timelines always stretched. In 1967 he would unveil a car so far out there that the media went crazy, the tec...

There's nothing like upping the horsepower of an engine with boost. Multiple methods of supercharging exist today and have been brought to an incredible level of efficiency.   While these methods were not invented in WWII, their use was vastly studied, tweaked, and tested to their limits back then. This video is the next in a series about the history of centrifugal superchargers and their use on p...

In 1955 General Motors decided to put on a show, not just any show, a gathering of vehicles, horsepower, and entertainment the likes of which the world had never seen before and never saw again.   Powerama was a one million square foot fantasyland of every off-highway division of General Motors on display. Dubbed the "World's Fair of Power" it had locomotives, bulldozers, elephants, aircraft, tank...

This is the story of an engine. Not just any engine, but the engine that created the idea of "American Muscle". It was the lightest, most powerful airplane engine in the world during WWI and it was designed by two guys in a hotel room during a five day marathon in Washington D.C.in 1917. Making 450hp and being produced by multiple American car companies, this engine was a master class in simplicit...

This is the in-depth history of Hydrazine in the sport of Drag Racing. It is one of the most mythic, misunderstood, and undocumented stories of the sport's past.   In this video we'll explore the origins of hydrazine, how it found its way into cars, how it enhances nitromethane and all of its associated dangers.   Hydrazine was by far the most dangerous chemical ever handled regularly by drag race...

Nitromethane is the world's most powerful racing fuel but it's history and how it came to be may actually be more fascinating than its chemistry.   Nitromethane was first made in a laboratory in Germany back in 1872 and as you'll find out, it's history goes far beyond the race track. In this multiple part series we'll explore the origins of nitromethane, why is it a miraculous chemical compound, h...

While the Liberty V-12 airplane engine of WWI is widely celebrated, there was another Liberty machine that has been all but forgotten. The WWI Liberty truck was designed and manufactured in great haste for an American Army that had all but forgotten to modernize itself before The Great War began. After chasing Pancho Villa around Mexico with a rag-tag fleet of hundreds of different vehicles in 191...

This is the story of Walter Arfons' incredible Wingfoot Express 2 rocket land speed car. It's also a history of some pretty incredible rocket powered cars from the 1920s through the 1960s. Machines that raced on dirt tracks, performed at fairs, and even ran at the Indianapolis 500.   The story of the creation of the Wingfoot Express 2 is one of perseverance, dedication, mechanical skill, and pure...

This is the story of a company that is one of the most incredible in auto racing history. An operation known for making small engines for fire pumps, for manufacturing forklifts, and for creating marine diesel engines would become the most dominating F1 engine builder of the late 1950s and early 1960s.   How did this happen? Why did this happen? Who MADE this happen?   All those questions are answ...

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 re...

The famed Novi V8 is one of the most storied engine in American motorsports history and also one of the most star-crossed.   Massively power, innovative in its design and capable of making noise like no other engine in the history of the Speedway, it never won a race.   But why? How does the most powerful engine for a two decade span not win...anything?   This is a complete history of the Novi bot...

This is a story about how five cars with no proper competition class, all running on nitro, crashed the party at the 1965 NHRA US Nationals and changed drag racing forever.   This is the story of early funny cars, their search for acceptance, the resistance they had to battle, and how creative owners and builders got in making sure they got the attention and press they deserved. These cars were re...

The Offenhauser four cylinder engine is one of the most incredible power plants in the history of American motorsports.   It's basic design was conceived as a boat engine in the 1920s, making about 125hp. By the time it was all said and done, Offy engines raced into the 1980s and were making 10 times the power they were at first.   The story of the Offy is so amazing because of the cast of charact...

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...

Today, centrifugal superchargers play a huge roll in the sport of drag racing. They are capable of making huge power efficiently and the technology built into them is of the highest orders of strength and precision.   This is a far cry from the early 1960s when four guys, thousands of miles apart thought that drag racing needed a new boost option for the masses. The Dahms brothers in Connecticut c...

The history of land speed racing is marked by some of the most innovative, interesting, and oddball vehicles ever made. One of them belonged to Art Arfons and was known as The Anteater.   Using a turbocharged and supercharged 1,710ci Allison aircraft engine, it was Arfons' first dedicated Bonneville car. It ran more than 300mph and was actually used to try and set a speed record at Daytona Interna...

This is the story of three men.   Three men who through their own bravery, creative approach, and lifelong obsessions, created the industry of oil well fire fighting.   Tex Thornton, Myron Kinley, and Red Adair all built up each other's knowledge and success to make scads of money while risking their lives on a daily basis to put out burning oil and gas wells, cap blown out wells, and otherwise ba...

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 co...

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 co...