This story was published originally in Benzina #15, Summer 2018. (Issues available) Used here with permission. Period photos courtesy Andrew Richman Archives unless otherwise attributed. In summer 1963 honeymooners Morris Parker and Sandra Parker rolled their two-year-old MG Midget into a campsite on the beach at Badalona, north east Spain. The couple pitched camp beside a behemoth military ambulance, white with black trim and fenders. Two English speakers around Morris’s age had repurposed the late 40s British Bedford KZ into lodgings, workshop and transportation. They said they were motorcycle...

This story was originally published in January 1999.  The story was updated and republished in the summer of 2012 to coincide with the first public showing of the original cut of the film. This further updated version has never seen print.   In the wee hours of a West Knoxville morning in 1981, Brad Reeves crept out of bed at his parent’s home to perform a pre-adolescent ritual many men still remember, a ceremony that alters boys-room conversations forever. He glimpsed his first bare breasts on TV. Even for 1981, the scenes weren’t especially pornographic, but to a ten year old boy,...

This story was published originally in Benzina #11, Summer 2013. Used here with permission. Period photos and poster courtesy Kerela Schilling Cox. Former road racer Madison Cox died July 11, 2012 in Knoxville, Tennessee, USA. His ashes will spend eternity in an urn fabricated from a Ducati muffler. Early 80s photos of Madison and his black Super Dharma race bike, sporting red "Darkroom" sponsor logos, dominated his memorial service. His last street bike was a Monster S4R. Madison's blood ran Ducati red. But his obituary focused on the Daytona Battle of the Twins race he won on a 1978 Guzzi...

Two Jefferson County cruisers rolled by us on their way to the back of camping Lot C. A Barber track pickup approached from the rear, green lights a' blazing. We had seen IPhone cameras flashing, and heard muted applause, but not much over the Honda generators powering SEC football coverage. We overheard a pouty pedestrian complain, "They shut down the slow race!" Some sensitive campers had complained about the noise, barely discernible over the humming generators, so no mo slo race. It isn't as frequent as it was for the inaugural AMA Superbike races at Barber Motorsports Park in 2003, but sometimes...

In June I drove my 1982 Renault Le Car to that mythical "farm in the country" where it can roam free. With all the other free French cars. Actually it wasn't quite free. I got a few bucks for the mountain of Franco-spares that went with the car. Click and Clack named the Le Car the sixth worst car of the millennium. Ours lasted almost as long as they did, and cost far less than our local NPR station pays per year for Car Talk programming. If it was truly the sixth worst car ever, that just shows how good even bad cars are. Tom and Ray did a bit on the show once about French car ownership...