By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

The car is salvage from a New York City art exhibition wherein the creator set up a living environment entirely covered in crochet–an apartment that looks like it’s inhabited by a schizophrenic grandma, with the Minor parked out front. The eBay auction, stalled at time of writing with only one 500-dollar bid, might be a little more successful if the seller gave some indication of the condition of the car. Is it a straight running Minor that’s just been covered with a giant tea-cozy, or has it been more permanently disabled? The only clue in the ad is an ominous reference to “plaster sculpture” in the car’s construction. But that could mean anything, right? Check out the action here.

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

Our buddies at RevRods, who were featured in Photo of the Day recently, have created a mockup of their new product: a chess set made out of engine and transmission components. Nice idea, and it’s one that anyone with access to a junkyard and a bit of black and white spraybomb could fabricate for themselves. For the lazy, RevRods is taking orders for custom-fabbed sets here.

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

I’d been consciously ignoring the attention-seeking “artist” who rigged up a machine to crush a series of perfectly decent muscle cars into each other last year, but I finally noticed a video of the destruction when it turned up on Streetfire. This member’s comment on the video much sums up my feelings on the issue: “I’d like to see a mushroom cloud in place of that museum.” What an idiotic waste.

SLOW DEATH OF AMERICAN MUSCLE

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

This creature kind of makes me think of what road-crew flaggers might have looked like in the Disney-Pixar Cars if the creators had chosen to anthropomorphize them. Student Joseph Carnevale reportedly got in trouble with the cops for this prank, though the construction company he stole the cones from just thought it was funny. Via saturnic’s livejournal.

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

Korean artist Ji Yong Ho’s weird tire sculptures have been making the rounds for at least a couple of years now, but they sure are new to me. I love how he uses the recycled treads to create the textures of skin, scales, and shaggy fur on his lifelike creatures. See more below the jump, and check out his bio here.

Continue reading "Tire Mutants!" »

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

It’s too old-school to be a Transformer–this bizarre hulk has that 50s-sci-fi-comic-book thing going for it. It appears to include the complete front clips of at least three Cold War-mobiles–can anyone id them? Spotted by English Russia near Odessa in the Ukraine.

By Craig Pike

Craig Pike

I met pinstriper and all around cool cat Charlie Decker online, probably at Myspace, before I met him in person at the Grand National Roadster Show. I hit him up for some samples of his pinstriping and a quick bio so you’d know his style a little more. For you west-side cruisers, you better make an appointment! Charlie lives in Connecticut, so if you see him, grab him and his striping kit to lay down some crazy flowing lines.

I’ve included some of my favorite pinstriping from the “One Arm Bandit” as he’s known. These animal creations and artistic forms he’s blended with sweeping stripes blow me away. I’m not sure I could draw that in a hundred tries and he throws it down freehand in paint right from his mind to the brush. I don’t know if we’ll see this kind of work on hot rods, but if that’s what you want…

Continue reading after the jump!

Continue reading "Pinstriping Animal Style: The One Arm Bandit" »

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

Patrick Dempsey (no relation to the actor) spends his time cruising the California-Nevada desert on his dirt bike, photographing piles of abandoned junk he finds off backroads and around abandoned mines. The pictures are pretty cool, though Dempsey has become convinced that the often burned and bullet-riddled hulks he finds–along with similarly-dilapidated mattresses, toilets, washing machines, and other detritus–are in fact the sacred offerings of a clandestine American Indian religion. More junk below the jump, and check out the full image series and accompanying weird essay here.

Continue reading "Cool Junk In The Desert" »

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

A lot of you have probably seen Acura’s latest TV spot and figured it was just plain old CGI. Turns out, though, that the ad was done entirely with stop-action animation using the talents of UK street artists David Whittle and Henry “Sainty” St. Leger. They used one giant 40′ x 60′ board with the Acura positioned in front of it, then created a moving tapestry of urban scenery, one frame at a time, by repainting the canvas (and in some cases, the car) for each successive shot to create the illusion of forward movement. Nothing was computer generated or superimposed–see that aerial view where the birds fly over? Those birds were painted directly onto the floor and the vehicle’s roof to produce that sequence. The whole thing took ten days, 455 gallons of paint, and 503 rattle-cans, and they had to keep an automotive detailer on location–and you thought your last spray-bomb paint job was messy. Follow the jump to check out the making-of video.

Continue reading "Making Of Acura's RDX "Wall Art" Ad" »

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

This inflatable Trans Am created by Guy Overfelt will be on display at an in Emeryville, California art exhibition on Friday. Pretty cool. Maybe we can get him to build a ride page for it. Via Jalopnik