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

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

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