The Retro Blog

Flying today is pretty miserable. Rude passengers treat the cabin like their living room. You have to wait for two hours to get patted down by an unfriendly security guard. On a flight home from Japan I was randomly selected to get a thorough going over at the security gate. The guard was the tallest, manliest Japanese [...]

Concept cars are little dreams about future cars that get produced for auto shows. They’re made to show what cars might look like in the near future, but are almost never actually put into production. Here’s a gallery from the New York Times that shows some gorgeous concept cars General Motors designed in the 1950’s.

This post is not for the faint of heart. A while back educational filmmakers figured out that the best way to get people’s attention was to show ‘em blood. These films take it to the extreme, showing people just what can go wrong if you don’t follow the rules.
“Signal 30″ is the most infamous of the [...]

If the winner of The Cold War was going to be determined by who had the most awesome looking new technology, I think the Ruskies would have been miles ahead of us. You know Sputnik looked sweet, but what about this lesser known project, EPIK. This flying saucer like aircraft was being designed in secret [...]

I imagine recumbent bikes start when somebody thought, “well I like riding a bike but I wish it was a little more like sitting in a La-Z-Boy.” I have no idea about the reasoning behind some of these other unique retro bike designs. “I like unicycles, but with a seat they’re just too comfortable and [...]

It’s impossible to look cool on a Segway. I’m pretty sure those things were designed specifically to make the user look like a dork. They could definitely use some retro flare. Check out this 1965 “Mono-Scoot” design concept. If Segways looked like this I would actually have believed the inventor’s claims that in the future [...]

With rising gas prices, car dealerships are having a hard time selling SUV’s. Small cars are king again. Newseek has a slideshow of very small retro cars. Some are even micro. They’re very cute and I imagine they get pretty good mileage. Might give you a neck cramp, though.

What’s more retro-fabulous than towing a Vespa behind a classic VW Beetle? Towing it on a VW Beetle styled trailer. I imagine this rig wasn’t cheap, but it sure looks nice. They also get points for the chrome luggage rack on the car. Who knew Beetles had so much power? [via neatorama]

We’ve all seen tire commercials that advertise the tires’ ability to keep vehicle occupants safe. It seems that in the 60’s and early 70’s, this marketing was directed entirely toward women. After all, women are horrible drivers. You might think you don’t need a nice set of Goodyear tires, but as this sexist ad attests, [...]

Who wouldn’t want to ride a bike named the “Spacelander“? Luckily the design is equally impressive. Crafted in fiberglass, it has curves you just don’t see these days. Reminds me of the electric bicycle prototype previously featured here at The Retro Blog, except this is even more exciting because they were actually produced for a [...]

I’ve always wanted a sidecar. I’ve never had much interest in motorcycles, but sidecars, that’s a whole other story. It’s just too bad I can’t have the sidecar without the motorcycle. Whereas motorcycles have been updated to modern design styles, sidecars still retain the beauty of their pre-1950’s heyday. I think I’m a sucker for [...]

I can think of no city symbol more awesome than the Seattle Space Needle. It’s not the tallest structure. It doesn’t even really do anything. Except be awesome. You can just picture a bunch of grown men in a meeting gleefully shouting,
“Yeah, yeah, it’s gonna look like a huge flying saucer!”
“And it’ll spin around!”
“Can we [...]

Here’s a short video of a man going on a quick jetpack ride over Tomorrowland at Disneyland. Why don’t we all have jetpacks in the 21st century? I guess there’s the whole thing about them being extremely inefficient. And judging by the pained faces of the kids in the video covering their ears hard enough [...]

I’ve been keeping an eye on these electric bikes from Schwinn for a while. The battery gives you an extra push when you get tired. I think I’d be inclined to ride a bike more often if I weren’t so intimidated by San Francisco’s landscape. It’s certainly not the worst looking bike, and it [...]