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Tatra 87 Shines at Hilton Head Concours d’Elegance

The Tampa Bay Automobile Museum’ s 1942 Tatra 87 was recognized at the Hilton Head Island Concours d’Elegance with multiple honors, including the Chairman’s Award. Surrounded by some of the most remarkable automobiles in the world, the Tatra drew steady attention for its unusual beauty, its engineering innovation, and its distinct presence on the show field. For the museum, the recognition felt like a celebration of both art and science. The Tatra 87 is not just an elegant

Lancia Lambda: The World’s First Unibody Car

Lancia stand at the Paris Motor Show at the beginning of October 1922 A century ago, one car rewrote the rules. When the Lancia Lambda debuted at the 1922 Paris Motor Show, it looked elegant, but what lay beneath made it revolutionary. Built in Turin, Italy, the Lambda was the world’s first production unibody car, the first with independent front suspension, and among the earliest touring cars with four-wheel brakes. It handled better, stopped faster, and rode more smoothly

The Tampa Bay Automobile Museum Adds Its First Motorcycle: The 1989 Norton Commander with a Rotary Engine

The Tampa Bay Automobile Museum has officially added its first motorcycle and it’s no ordinary bike. The 1989 Norton Commander , powered by a 588 cc Wankel rotary engine, represents a daring engineering experiment in motorcycle history. Unlike traditional piston engines, the Wankel rotary uses spinning triangular rotors instead of reciprocating pistons, producing power in a smooth, continuous motion. The result is a compact, lightweight engine with an uncanny turbine-like fee

André Citroën’s Half-Track Expeditions: From Sahara to the Himalayas

When Cars Became Instruments of Exploration What if a car could go where only camels, caravans, and explorers once dared? In the 1920s and 30s, French automaker André Citroën set out to prove that the automobile wasn’t just for city streets and countryside drives, it could conquer deserts, jungles, and even the high passes of the Himalayas. His bold vision gave birth to a trilogy of expeditions that pushed the limits of engineering and captured the world’s imagination. The Fi

The wild experiments that paved the way for the first car

When Carl Benz rolled out his Patent-Motorwagen in 1886, history took note: the automobile had arrived. But long before Benz made the...

Cugnot Fardier à Vapeur Replica – The First Self-Propelled Vehicle

Smoke, Steam, and the Birth of the Automobile The crowd stares. A strange machine rattles forward, belching steam, its wheels grinding...

From Disney Star to Car Designer: The Remarkable Journey of David J. Stollery

David Stollery Few careers shift as dramatically as that of David J. Stollery. Famous in the 1950s as a Disney child star, he walked away from Hollywood to pursue a completely different passion: designing automobiles. That bold transition would carry him from the bright lights of television to the studios of General Motors, Toyota’s pioneering California design team, and eventually to building experimental sports cars of his own. A Life in Two Acts Spin and Marty TV poster Bo

From NSU Spider to Mazda 787B: The Story of the Wankel Engine

Citroën promotional film from the early 1970s The Dream of Felix Wankel When German engineer Felix Wankel first sketched his dream of a piston-less engine, few believed it would ever run. Yet by the 1950s, at NSU Motorenwerke in Neckarsulm, prototypes were alive and humming, compact, smooth, and unlike anything the automotive world had seen. The rotary promised to banish vibration, deliver high revs, and shrink the engine bay. To a generation of postwar engineers, it felt lik