The Dork-O-Motive Podcast

Bill Lear will go down as one of the most incredible inventors of the 20th century. The man who created the car radio, miniature tuning coils for radios, who invented auto-pilot, radio guidance for airplanes, and the basic automatic landing system that is still in refined use today he also invented the 8-track tape, and his biggest accomplishment, The Lear Jet.  There is one area where he failed s...

The 1927 Dole Air Race stands as one of the most bizarre and tragic events in the history of flight. Paid for by James Dole, the pineapple magnate, the race was designed to capitalize on the fame that came from Charles Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic on a solo flight. The twist was that the people in this race were to fly from Oakland, California to Hawaii. 15 airplanes entered the race and the de...

This is the story of one of the greatest engineering achievements of the  Victorian Age. It is also the story of a ship so far ahead of its time it was one of the greatest financial failures ever accounted in the modern world. At the time of its construction in the 1850s, the massive SS Great Eastern was the largest moving man-made object on Earth and was five times larger than the next largest sh...

A couple of years ago, Buffalo got hammered with one of the all time record short term snowfall totals in American history. The seven feet of snow they got over the course of a day or two brought the city to a halt, brought the national guard out with as many machines as they can muster, and will long live in the lore of wild Buffalo lake effect weather. As brutal as this dumping on Buffalo was it...

There was a time in America when the most famous person in the entire country was a lunatic with a motorcycle called Evel Knievel. His fame and his public bravery reached their outer limits on September 8, 1974 when Knievel tried to jump the Snake Rive Canyon in Idaho in what amounted to an unguided missile. The story of this jump, its promotion, and ultimate failure is something that will long li...

The story of how John and Horace Dodge helped get Henry Ford into business, made millions off of him, and then used his own profits to fund a competing car company is one of the most awesome in the history of the automobile. A very healthy business relationship devolved into an epic battle of ultra-wealthy guys trying to out maneuver each other in the courts and with money. There are clear winners...

Yes, Abraham Lincoln was a gearhead. The man who many still hold as the greatest President in the history of the United States is the only President to hold a patent and his legal work helped to lay the groundwork for the modern world of transportation as we know it. Back in 1849 Lincoln used the full strength of his mechanical creativity and smarts to create a system whereby stuck riverboats coul...

Many people believe that since the early 1950s, the National Hot Rod Assocaition has had the dominant spot in the sport of drag racing across America. Those people would be wrong. See, in 1958 Wally Parks was facing the biggest threat he would ever encounter with respect to the NHRA that he had founded and started in the early 1950s. It was a corporately backed organization called the Automotibile...

Just before 9 A.M. on Friday, May 13th, 1949 a truck carrying unstable and dangerous chemicals exploded inside the Holland Tunnel's Southbound side while traveling out of New York City. Instantly, a disaster broke out with multiple trucks catching fire and the 100+ cars behind the mess grinding to a halt.  Within scant minutes, heroic tunnel personnel were rushing people and cars out of the tunnel...

Back in 1940s and 50s America it wasn’t a question if the forest should be ripped down, it was a question of how quickly that pesky forest could be dispatched with and who could figure out the best way to do it. Such was the case when the US Government put out a contract to clear 35,000 acres of forest in the wilds of Montana at the site of the Hungry Horse Dam projects. The mammoth dam would be u...

The sinking of the SS Sultana in 1865 to this day stands as the greatest maritime disaster in the history of the United States. More people died in the middle of the Mississippi river on an April night than would die some 50 years later on the Titanic in the depths of the North Atlantic. This is a story of steam, a story of greed, a story of sadness, and a story of the astonishing lengths some peo...

This was the fastest machine in the world in 1932. It had 45-mph on Sir Malcom Campbell’s land based monster, it had 172-mph on Gar Wood’s boat that packed four massive Packard airplane engines and let’s not even waste our time on locomotives of the day. It was piloted by a talented, daring man who a decade later would become one of America’s greatest war heroes and it was constructed by a group o...

Art Arfons was the world's land speed record holder three times in the 1960s. He was the first man over 150mph on a drag strip, he was a world's champion tractor puller, and he did it all by himself, using his brain, his hands and very few dollars. This episode of the Dork-O-Motive podcast celebrates the life and times of this amazing America, a man some argue is the greatest hot rodder of all tim...

In the 1960s New York City had a problem. The buildings and growth of Gotham had outstripped the ability of the fire department to battle the potentially massive blazes they might confront. This all came to a head on a windy day on Staten Island. The massive blaze wrought destruction on the community and is still spoken about today. Black Saturday prompted a brilliant mind to approach the city wit...

It seems incredible by the standards of 2020, but the 1903 Paris to Madrid Race was such an incalculable calamity and had amassed such a loss of life that it was cancelled after the first day. In an era when the most powerful cars in the world made less than 100hp how could this happen? Too many people, too few rules, too little knowledge of what these machines were capable of, and ultimately no p...

The Vulcan Shuttle is one of the most infamous cars in drag racing history. A virtually stock bodied VW Beetle with a solid fuel rocket engine for power, it was built and campaigned by Raul Cabrera and Ron Poole. Ultimately Poole was killed in the car but only after several seasons of successful exhibition competition and more than 100 runs.  The history of the car is incredible and the men behind...

It was called, "The Race of Two Worlds" and it was one of the neatest racing spectacles ever devised. The premise was simple. American Indianapolis racers vs the best European Formula One teams on the speed oval at Monza, Italy. The speed course at Monza was a near identical copy of Indianapolis Motor Speedway but with increased banking. The course was so similar it was nicknamed, "Monzanapolis". ...

Sometimes all the wrongs do make a right and this story is proof. Two guys with the wrong car, the wrong background, and the wrong approach somehow managed to break a record that had stymied the best engineers, had killed the best racers, and had challenged the most famous racing series' in the world in 1961. Bob Osiecki and Art Malone teamed up to set the closed course speed record at over 180mph...

It was the racing party to end all racing parties and it happened at the 1974 US Grand Prix in an area of Watkins Glenn International Raceway known as the Bog. A muddy area that was virtually cheap to inhabit all weekend long with no rules and less security turned into a booze and drug fueled hellscape of crashed cars, crashed people, and ultimately a burning Greyhound bus. It is a story of fun, o...

This is the awesome and improbably story of how a 23-year old speed shop counter worker became the last guy to ever win top fuel at a national event in a front engine dragster. From the car's history with Don Prudhomme to the bizarre raceday turns of events that made it all happen, host Brian Lohnes tells you the story and gives you the details that you don't hear anywhere else.  In 1971 when Don...

The story of Turbonique, the most insane speed parts company in the history of cars is amazing. it involves a NASA consultant, an obsession with hot rodding, dangerous fuels, deception, mail fraud, and prison time. It also involves rocket powered automotive speed parts that were sold to the general public for the span of a half-decade, many of which propelled cars down drag strips to astonishingly...

There are strange days at the drag strip and then there are days you wish you never went to the drag strip. One of those days occurred at the 1975 NHRA LeGrand National at Sanair Super Speedway outside of Montreal, Canada. This was the only NHRA National event contested in Canada and was run at Sanair into the 1990s.  Anyway, this is the funny and semi-painful story of a pre-race ceremony gone wro...

The sport of drag racing has many strange stories woven into its history, but perhaps none stranger than that of Broadway Freddie DeName. A funny car racer, a car thief, and ultimately a mafia killer for the most infamous crew in American history. DeName was a 4th grade drop out who could not read or write, but he was a brilliant mechanic.  Through historical research, interviews with people who k...

In one of the weirdest promotions of all time, Diamond REO shipped a brand new prototype dump truck to Africa in 1967 and pre-ran the entire route of the East African Safari Rally. This was an insane feat of endurance and strength as the rally was basically a 3,000 mile trip on dirt roads with dangerous bridges, narrow roads, mountain terrain, and outright peril. Three guys drove the truck the who...

Captain Jack McClure is one of the most fascinating stories in the history of American motorsports. A racer, a daredevil, and as brave a human that has ever lived, McClure's ticket powered life is the stuff of legend. Listen here as Brian Lohnes shares his story with period facts, period audio, and the most detail his story has ever been told with.    Jack McClure did many things but the fact that...