Route 66 Art Cards

You may have seen me call them trading cards. They have a new name: Art Cards. At 6 x 9", they are much larger than a trading card. Each one is a physical, numbered edition art card, made to hang on the wall as much as to hold in your hand.

The first drop is sixteen cards, drawn from the Car Culture Route 66 archive built in the 1990s. Each card features a STOP: a roadside attraction along Route 66. Each is a numbered edition printed with archival ink. Each carries a certificate of authenticity on the back. Each one prompts memories.

Think of the stops a traveler would have known: a motel in Tulsa, a gas pump in Oklahoma, Twin Arrows out in the Arizona high desert, the Santa Monica Pier where the road finally runs out of country.

Small enough for the palm of your hand. Worthy of a frame. Big enough to hold a place in your heart.

The story rides along

A card is not just an image. Every card carries the history behind its stop.

Why did a gas pump in Oklahoma matter so much? Because Oklahoma was oil country. The same fields that drew wildcatters and boomtowns put gas in the tank of the families heading west on 66. The road and the oil grew up together — one needed the other.

Why neon? Because after dark, a traveler needed to know where to stop. Light was the advertisement and the promise at once: open, safe, still here. Pull over and rest awhile.

Why roadside motels? Because the motor court let a family on the road pull the car right up to the door. Many were mom-and-pop places — owners who painted the signs and kept the porch light on.

These are the small lessons the road teaches if you slow down long enough to read them. The cards are meant to slow you down. And to pass on knowledge about the lore of Route 66.

"66 is the mother road, the road of flight "
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (New York: Viking Press, 1939)

An idea: your memories, too

In these letters I keep asking about your road — the car your family drove, the sign the kids shouted at from the back seat, the town a grandparent grew up in.

One idea I am exploring: a simple way for families to connect their own memories to a card. A grandparent who lived along Route 66 could add the story only they remember — the diner, the station, the night the neon came on — so the card becomes a keepsake that carries both the place and the people. Something to pass down.

It is an idea, not a promise, and not part of what you buy. The card stands on its own.

A project that evolves

Route 66 Kicks is a work in progress. The road never stood still — towns grew, signs changed, alignments moved — and this project won't either. I will keep learning, keep adding stops, and keep sharing what the archive teaches. When something is ready, you will hear it here.

Stay on the road

The shop is not open yet. When the Art Cards are ready, this list hears first. The horn will honk.

Join the Route 66 Kicks list

Email updates for the Route 66 centennial - Wonder Endures, sixteen 6×9″ collectibles, and the next stop along Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona & California. Free subscribe · Car Culture, Inc.

https://route66kicks.com

Your turn: which stop along Route 66 would you want on a card? A motel, a pump, a sign that is still standing — or one that is gone? Tap Comments and tell me. Every reply is another mile marker.

The record has to outlast the room.

The Route 66 archive grows one stop at a time.

Get your kicks.

— Lucinda

Route 66 Kicks · Car Culture, Inc.

© 2026 Automobilia II, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

The annual Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance is a room that lasts one Sunday. On August 16, at the 75th Concours, the Alfa Romeo B.A.T. 5, B.A.T. 7, and B.A.T. 9 stood on the grass together again. Franco Scaglione drew them. Bertone built them. Alfa Romeo supplied the 1900 bones.

The concept cars arrived in three successive Turin automotive shows — 1953, 1954, 1955 — and were never shown as a set when they were new. The first time the triptych occupied one place was this same lawn in 1989, so Nuccio Bertone, an honored guest, could see the work whole. They came back in 2005. They came back for the diamond year. Then the tent comes down. The cars leave. The week becomes a caption on the timeline of the automotive parade.

B.A.T. 7 is the one that still does the damage, continuously echoing through my mind. The inward wings. The satin body. The sense that Scaglione in 1954 had already transcended the decade he was standing in. Bertone had the taste to stay close to that hand — a coachbuilder who could see the leap and build it. I have photographed all three B.A.T.s over the years. In 1989 I photographed the B.A.T. 7 for a presentation to Bertone himself. He sent a thank-you note written in Italian. I sat with the letter and translated it the slow way, word by word, the way you learn a car you cannot own — by staying with it until the meaning arrives.

It’s the same way I learned some of my cameras — keeping them close until the person who ground the glass and timed the shutter felt present, and the emulsion finally absorbed what I meant. That Bertone note is not in the catalog. The photograph is. Both are part of what the B.A.T. 7 held that week.

A file in the archive still carries the old working title: 1954 Alfa Romeo… Concept Bertone. A TIFF number. A thumbnail. Stars. A copyright registration. The living object and the dated photograph are not the same thing. Both matter. Only one will still be checkable when the fairway is just a fairway.

Above this letter is a sheet of decades—penny-farthings, frames, engines, taillight studies, a block of type that keeps flashing 1950s. Each square is a short loop. A clock made of pictures. The B.A.T. 7 is one hour on that clock. The rest of the hours will take their turn.

That is the fight underneath the noise of the last year. It is not really about AI models or tokens. It is about who gets to say what a car was.

Maps get redrawn. Automotive placards grow more certain as the years pass. Auction catalogs borrow one another’s sentences until the first voice is hard to find. Now a machine can invent a past that sounds true enough to pass in a hurry.

Wonder is still why anyone stands behind a B.A.T. 7 at all. Wonder drives the automotive enthusiast to the show. Wonder without a dated record is how a motel becomes an empty lot and a service station becomes a rumor. The photograph made while the sheet metal was in that light is not nostalgia. It is evidence.

Route 66 was bypassed so the country could go through coast to coast. The towns at the edge of the asphalt were told they were no longer the point. They kept the Mother Road together anyway — the hand-drawn map pointing the way, the place that fixed flats, the neon that now exists mainly in a frame, the people who stayed after the interstate taught America to drive past. The Mother Road is still here because the edges kept the past wired to the future.

Car culture has the same shape. The engineer, the designer, the panel beater, the photographer, the judge, the restorer who will never be called to the ramp, the owner who writes a note in another language — they live at the edge of the official story. They are what keeps the highway of memory from becoming only a price and a paragraph.

There is a New Mexico rhyme I cannot leave alone. In the same state the Mother Road crosses, Carlsbad Caverns still stages the evening flight: the bats leaving the cave mouth at dusk. Travelers leave the Mother Road and head south to watch a living system do what it has done for a very long time. Every so often the automotive audience is given its own flight — the Alfa Romeo B.A.T.s rolled into the light for a weekend, then gone. One is biology. One is sheet metal and nerve. Both endure by returning, not by being explained once.

Scaglione’s wings were not sculpture first. They were an argument with air. These cars were built to move. The joy of the open road is what outlasted the bypass. Efficiency got the through-line. Culture kept the two-lane.

We will keep the slow homage going across the Route 66 centennial window — cards, prints, proofs that lead back to a picture you can still examine. The decade loops will surface when they are ready. The B.A.T. 7 file stays where it is: a specific day, a specific light, a letter that took time to read.

The record has to outlast the room.

The edges have to outlast the bypass.

The B.A.T. endures because someone kept showing up while the wings were still in that light.

If you have been reading along, you already know where mile one is. Stay on the road. The archive grows one stop at a time.

Earlier on the road

Route 66 Kicks * The Record Outlasts the Room

There are many roadside attractions and stops I photographed on Route 66 that no longer look the way they did when I stood there with a camera. Bill's Station - the kind of place the interstate taught America to drive past.

https://paragraph.com

Route 66 Kicks * There Will Be Signs

Long before standardized shields, hand-painted arrows and glowing neon gave voice to the open desert-shaping early highway culture and building the visual soul of Roadside America.

https://paragraph.com

Join the Route 66 Kicks list

Email updates for the Route 66 centennial - postcards, stories & drops along Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona & California. Free subscribe · Car Culture, Inc.

https://carculture.com

© 2026 Automobilia II, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Explore the full RS Curves collection and all sixteen colorways:

Bill’s Station — the kind of place the interstate taught America to drive past. When I documented the Mother Road over multiple trips, places like Bill’s Station were already half-memory: paint failing, neon uncertain, the parking lot quieter than the postcard promised. Some stops have been loved back into light. Some have been altered until only the photograph still knows the earlier face. A few were demolished — Coral Court outside St. Louis, the Flamingo Motor Hotel in Flagstaff — and the lot filled with something else. Only the dated picture still holds the room.

That is not a tragedy in the movie sense. It is quieter. A room empties. A chalk board is erased and new "Special of the Day" is rewritten. A map updates and leaves the old name off. The road is still there in pieces — but the meaning of the pieces drifts unless someone kept a dated record of what they were.

I feel the same premonitions standing next to a classic car I photographed in 1988. I can recall the light, the event, and perhaps some of the people standing next to me. I remember the car's impact and the many questions I had, what was answered over the years and what has not been answered. The car and I still vibe together on some level.

Same chrome. Same silhouette. Same hunger to get the light right. And the same unease: will anyone later be able to prove what this machine looked like, where it stood, what the story was — or will we be left with nostalgia as decoration and uncertain provenance? An important moment preserved with no checkable past.

We care about Route 66 for the same reason we care about classic cars. Not because old things are charming. Because knowledge disappears if nobody keeps a record you can still examine.

Maps get redrawn. Placards beside classic cars sound more certain as the years pass. Auction catalogs and enthusiast pages borrow each other’s sentences until the original voice is hard to find. Now machines can invent a past that sounds true enough to pass in a hurry.

Wonder alone is not enough. The record is the other half — and it has to be made while the room still stands.

A photograph with a caption, a place name, a year, a durable proof — that is how a bypassed town continues to talk to us. That is how a car’s visual appearance at a given time and place becomes more than a rumor. The show tent comes down. The concours week ends. The browser tab closes.

The record has to outlast the room.

That is why this 100-year Centennial tribute — Route 66 Kicks — exists.

The installments — the hitchhiker’s map, Roadside America, the forgotten stretches, the revival, the signs, the cars — are not a travel brochure. They are a living archive in public: stories tied to original automobilia and fieldwork, published so the centennial is more than a hashtag. The prints and trading cards are not merchandise first. They are carriers of memory — a stop, a state, the town your great-grandparents grew up in, a face of the road you can hold — with a path back to an onchain proof that does not depend on whatever platform is fashionable this year.

Early Route 66 East–West sign — arrows and shields before the mark looked the same everywhere.

Signs like this are part of the living archive: not merchandise first, but a carrier of memory you can collect with a durable proof.

This is not a one-season drop. Over the next three years of the Centennial window, we will keep releasing Route 66 artwork — trading cards, prints, and related pieces — as a slow homage to the cultural icons of the Mother Road: the motels, signs, cars, and roadside stops that defined the years when Route 66 was officially open as America’s Main Street.

Blockchain certificates of authenticity, receipts, authenticated captions: unglamorous words for a simple promise. When the neon is dark and the room is empty, the record is still there to be read. And savored.

The Mother Road taught us what happens when efficiency bypasses culture. Classic car culture lives the same risk in miniature — every time a story is only in someone’s head, only on a server someone else controls, only in a caption nobody dated.

The road is still there in pieces.

The cars are still there in barns and on lawns and under tents.

The job is to preserve and persist what the pieces meant.

Route 66 was never just asphalt — it was and will remain a network of people, stops, and stories.

We’re treating the car community the same way: a living highway. Part of that work is quiet groundwork — iterative tests toward Route 66 AI — so the road we’re building can carry memory, not just merchandise or entertainment, but provenance that is documented.

If you have been reading along, thank you. If you are new, start at mile one. Stay on the list -- the archive grows one stop at a time. Trading cards and proofs will roll out across that three-year homage, not all at once.

The record has to outlast the room.

The series

Route 66 Kicks - Centennial 2026

Route 66 Kicks: postcards, art drops, stories & centennial updates along the Mother Road - Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona & California. A Car Culture, Inc. series.

https://carculture.com

Someone had to tell them.

Before the national shield

In the late 1920s, wayfinding was still a local craft. Entrepreneurs painted what the road had not yet standardized — arrows, place names, homemade shields that almost look like the mark we know, but not quite. Dates get fuzzy; painted history often does.

One rare piece in our collection still carries that early grammar: EAST | WEST, bold arrows, a 66 shape emerging before the emblem settled into the icon America memorized. It marks the beginning of Roadside America as sign language — not just asphalt, but messages you could read at speed.

The road learns to speak

As traffic grew, the signs evolved. Mile markers. Hand-lettered boards pointing to water, food, or fuel. Playful billboards. Enameled porscelain tat could take weather and still shout a brand. Then neon - light as advertisement, lights as promised: open, safe, still here.

Oil companies, tire makers, and dealers learned the same lesson the highway towns did: if you want the traveler to stop, you have to speak clearly from the curb. Instructional boards like Conoco’s DO NOT OIL WHILE IN MOTION turned the garage wall into a classroom. A tire sign sold trust between towns. A service mark said you were not alone with a broken fan belt.

Roadside America was not only built of diners and motor courts. It was built of letters, arrows, shields, and light.

"HERE IT IS" billboard

Out past Joseph City, Arizona, the Jack Rabbit Trading Post still stops the car with four words and a rabbit silhouette: HERE IT IS.

In a lot of American vernacular, here sounds like hare — and a jackrabbit is a hare. The billboard is a joke the desert tells at highway speed. Step inside the tourist trap and the gag continues: taxidermy of the ultra-rare jackalope, antlers on a hare, folklore sold beside postcards and cold drinks.

Roadside America didn’t only sell fuel and pie. It sold wonder you could photograph.

Keeping the signs lit

The story does not end when the paint peels. Neon restorers, historians, car clubs, and stubborn locals climb ladders in the heat, chase original colors, and re-bend glass tubes so the Mother Road can still speak after dark. That work is the quiet half of the centennial — not nostalgia as decoration, but memory as maintenance.

We are archiving both: weathered originals like the East–West board, and the living jokes like Jack Rabbit’s hare. There will be signs. We intend to keep lighting them — one essay, one card, one photograph at a time.

Your turn

What sign do you remember from the Mother Road — still standing, or gone? A shield, a motel arrow, a billboard that made the kids shout from the back seat?

Tap Comments at the bottom of this post and leave your story. No wallet, no extra app — just your words. Every reply is another mile marker.

Join the Route 66 Kicks list

Unfold the map—read the Route 66 Kicks series

Car Culture * the Art of the Automobile.

A newsletter meant to inspire lovers of car culture to perserve and persist knowledge of car culture for future generations. The development of the automobile is remarkably similar to the evolution of internet technologies.

https://paragraph.com

Route 66 Kicks · Car Culture, Inc. · Centennial 2026–2029

© 2026 Automobilia II, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Published under license from Automobilia II, LLC.

This week we're riding shotgun through the decades, exploring the cars, trucks, and dreams that defined travel along America's most iconic highway — and the parade of progress behind the American automotive legacy. Production is hard. Henry Ford's moving assembly line paved the way, and the innovation it unleashed was unparalleled, fanning the flame for a generation of American automotive engineers and entrepreneurs.

1930s — Dust Bowl & Determination

In Route 66's early days, the road witnessed mass migration. Families fleeing the Dust Bowl and the Depression piled into overloaded Model T and Model A Fords, farm trucks, and makeshift trailers, carrying everything they owned westward in search of a better life. Route 66 became a ribbon of hope cutting through hardship. Those without wheels tried their hand at the newest transportation craze — hitchhiking.

Depression-Era Glamour

Even in hard times, a parallel story unfolded. Hollywood stars, hopefuls, and affluent travelers cruised the highway in elegant Packards, Cadillacs, Studebakers, Lincolns, and Duesenbergs — shining symbols of pre-war luxury that stood in stark contrast to the migration caravans.

Post-WWII Boom — Chrome & Optimism (late 1940s–1950s)

Victory brought prosperity and an explosion of American automotive production. Families took to the open road in gleaming new Chevrolets, Fords, and Buicks with bold tailfins and acres of chrome. Motels, diners, and service stations flourished as Route 66 became the ultimate family vacation route — the very picture of mid-century optimism.

1960s — Music, Convertibles & Freedom

Rock 'n' roll on the radio, wind in your hair. The '60s delivered Mustangs, Thunderbirds, and convertibles cruising to the sound of the Beach Boys and Chuck Berry. Muscle cars shared the road with VW buses as a new generation claimed the Mother Road for adventure and self-expression. Bobby Troup's "(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66" — a hit for Nat King Cole in 1946 — was still pouring from dashboard radios two decades on.

The Journey Continues…

Every decade left its mark on the asphalt and in our collective memory. As we build toward the Route 66 Centennial in 2026, we're preserving these stories through limited heritage collectibles, vintage-style postcard art, and on-chain memories.

Car Culture — gallery, shop & stories

New arrivals: Watch for our latest "Greetings from" trading-card collectibles capturing Mohave County, Williams, Kingman, Seligman, Gallup, and Oklahoma scenes — each one echoing the cars and moods of its era. One card at a time. Still driving the Mother Road.

Your turn behind the wheel: What did your family — or your road-trip dreams — drive on Route 66? Reply or comment with your story. The best ones may inspire future postcards or collector cards.

Keep the wheels turning,

Car Culture, Inc. × Route 66 Kicks

The 1973 Porsche 911 Carrera RS 2.7 is considered to be one of the greatest Porsche 911s of all time. Conceived, designed and produced to meet homologation requirements for the sub-3.0 liter GT racing class, the aerodynamic body is badged with the model name RS for the German term Rennsport (race sport).

The debut of this lightened aerodynamic body enabled Porsche’s flat-six 2.7 liter engine to brilliantly compete against the powerful Ferrari Daytona twelve-cylinder engines and the DeTomaso Pantera powered by Ford V-8s.

The revised engine, brakes, suspension, distinctive rear spoiler, and flared fenders were just a few of the factory modifications that made this 911 RS a winner on the track. The addition of the Bürzel (German for “duck’s tail”) fiberglass rear deck lid, and the "Carrera" logo running full-length along the car's side sealed the deal for the GT customer.

This ultimate 1970s 911 is as stylistically distinctive as a chord from Jimi Hendrix’s guitar. The paint colors for the 1973 model year perfectly reverberated the zeitgeist of the early 1970s. “Ninety miles an hour is the speed I drive” was not only a rock and roll song lyric, but also the subliminal impression left by a sighting of this iconic road-race motorcar zipping along the roadway. Rock on!

Fifteen editions contain 100 numbered works. The sixteenth edition, named RS Curves – LSD, contains only 80 numbered pieces, bringing the total to 1,580 strictly limited works.

♥ Shop all sixteen colorways — framed editions on carculture.com

Presented for sale as either physical framed art or ERC-721 NFTs with provenance on Arweave, each work is sequentially numbered so that the edition total is strictly limited.

The artwork is a composite of multiple photographs digitally painted by the artist.

Explore the full RS Curves Collection here: →

RS Curves | Framed Limited Edition Porsche 911 Art | Car Culture

Sixteen RS Curves limited editions - 1,580 prints matching 1973 Porsche 911 Carrera RS 2.7 production. Porsche art, CarMania™ fine art prints, signed and numbered from Car Culture.

https://carculture.com

This is just the beginning.

SUBSCRIBE

Join the Route 66 Kicks list

Email updates for the Route 66 centennial - postcards, stories & drops along Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona & California. Free subscribe · Car Culture, Inc.

https://carculture.com

Next up: Our much-anticipated Route 66 Heritage Collectibles in time for the Centennial.

The motels were empty.
The neon was dark.
The diners were boarded up.
The towns were quiet.

The interstate had done its job too well.

But something unexpected happened — something no planner, engineer, or policymaker could have predicted.

People came back.

Not because they needed to.
Because they wanted to.

The Road That Refused to Die

In the 1980s and ’90s, travelers from all over the world began seeking out the old road. They came from Japan, Germany, Australia, France, the UK, Brazil — drawn by a mythic idea of America that still lived in the cracks of the pavement.

They weren’t looking for efficiency.
They were looking for authenticity.

They wanted:

the neon
the diners
the mom-and-pop motels
the wide-open spaces
the stories
the freedom

They wanted the America that Route 66 had promised.

And they found it — not on the interstates, but in the forgotten towns that had been bypassed decades earlier.

The Song That Named the Dream

In 1946, songwriter Bobby Troup wrote a line that would outlive every mile marker:

“Get your kicks on Route 66.”

That phrase became a rallying cry.

It captured the spirit of the road — the joy, the adventure, the possibility.
It turned Route 66 into something bigger than a highway.
It turned it into a symbol.

Decades later, when the Mother Road was officially decommissioned and the neon went dark, that song was still playing — on jukeboxes, in tour buses, in languages Route 66 had never heard when the pavement was new.

Travelers who had never set foot in America knew the lyrics.
They knew the rhythm.
They knew the promise.

And many of them came to experience it for themselves.

It’s the same spirit behind Route 66 Kicks — a tribute to the road that gave the world permission to dream.

The People Who Saved the Mother Road

The revival didn’t come from Washington.
It didn’t come from corporations.
It didn’t come from a federal program.

It came from:

local historians
motel owners
neon restorers
car clubs
photographers
preservationists
families who refused to let their towns disappear

They formed Route 66 associations.
They restored signs.
They reopened diners.
They rebuilt motor courts.
They held festivals.
They told stories.
They welcomed travelers from every corner of the world.

They brought the road back to life.

One neon tube at a time.
One postcard at a time.
One memory at a time.

What We’re Doing at Car Culture

The revival was always two kinds of work.

On the ground — keep the signs lit, the doors open, the stories alive.
In the record — keep the photographs, maps, postcards, and memories from disappearing when a town changes hands or a sign comes down.

Car Culture has spent decades on that second job: original photography, film and stories about American roadside culture — motels, neon, diners, and the cars that traveled between them.

For the Route 66 centennial (May 2026 through May 2027), we are publishing Route 66 Kicks — this series, The Road We Forgot, and artwork drawn from our collection across all eight states from Illinois to California.

We are not rebuilding the road.
The people above already did that.

We are documenting it — installment by installment — so the Mother Road stays visible in the century that follows.

More from the collection will appear here as each piece is finished. For now, this chapter belongs to the volunteers, the motel keepers, and the travelers who refused to let Route 66 become a footnote.

Stay on the Road With Us

If the revival taught us anything, it’s that the Mother Road survives when people show up.

♥ Join the Route 66 Kicks list — the next installment and centennial updates.
(Embed: route66kicks.com/subscribe or Paragraph Subscribe block)

♥ New here? Start with The Mother Road We Forgot (Installment I) and follow the series on Paragraph.

♥ Visit route66kicks.com — centennial hub and eight-state map.

Get your kicks.

Published by Car Culture, Inc. under license from Automobilia II, LLC.
Route 66 Kicks · Centennial 2026–2027

There is a particular kind of silence you only hear on an abandoned highway.

It’s not the silence of nature — not the wind in the grass or the distant hum of insects. It’s the silence of something that used to be alive.

A silence shaped like absence.

I heard that silence many times during my three-year documentation of Route 66. In the empty parking lots of shuttered motels. In the cracked asphalt of forgotten main streets. In the hollow shells of diners where the coffee pots had gone cold decades earlier.

It is the sound of memory fading.

When a road forgets itself

A road is more than pavement. It’s a record — a living one — of the people who traveled it.

But when the traffic disappears, the record begins to erase itself.

Paint peels. Signs rust. Neon flickers out. Stories scatter. Names vanish. Landmarks collapse. And the road forgets.

Not all at once. Not dramatically. But slowly, quietly, like a photograph left too long in the sun.

That’s what I witnessed on Route 66.

And that’s what we risk losing again — not just the road, but the memories of the people who made it matter.

The people who remember are leaving us

During my travels, I met men and women who had lived their entire lives along Route 66. They remembered:

• the sound of buses pulling into town

• the smell of frying onions from the diner

• the neon glow on summer nights

• the soldiers returning home

• the families heading west with everything they owned

• the hitchhikers sleeping under the stars

• the kindness of strangers

• the feeling that the whole country passed by their front door

Many of those people are gone now.

Their stories — unless someone captured them — are gone with them.

And that is the quiet tragedy of cultural memory: it doesn’t disappear because we stop caring. It disappears because we assume someone else is preserving it.

A story from the forgotten road

In New Mexico, I once found a motor court where the cabins still stood, their doors hanging open like mouths mid-sentence. Inside one of them, I found a single postcard on the floor — sun-bleached, curled at the edges, the ink barely legible.

It read:

“Made it to California. Wish you were here.”

No name. No date. No sender. No recipient.

Just a fragment of a life that once passed through this place.

I remember thinking: this is what happens when memory fades. We are left with pieces too small to understand the whole. Pity I did not pick that postcard up, but it is burned in my memory. I left it as a road sign for the next passerby.

When stories get bypassed

In Roadside America, we talked about towns the interstates drove past. Today the bypass is quieter: stories that never get written down, voices that don’t live on social feeds, memories that slip away while we assume someone else is saving them.

The people who lived this history aren’t on Instagram. They shouldn’t need a special app or a complicated login to know their stories matter.

But their stories deserve permanence — a place where they won’t vanish because time passed, a platform closed, or no one thought to ask.

Why I’m building a living archive

I’m building a way to preserve these stories — not as nostalgia, but as cultural heritage.

The hand-drawn hitchhiker’s map. Letters from the 1920s–40s. Photographs of abandoned towns. Diaries from the road. Memories of families who lived along the highway.

Route 66 Kicks is how we keep them in view — in a form meant to outlast us, without asking anyone to understand the machinery behind the archive.

Tap Comments on this post and leave your story. No wallet, no extra app — just your words.

Because Route 66 was never just a highway. It was a living archive of American life.

And archives deserve caretakers.

What comes next

In the next installment, we’ll explore the revival — how Route 66, once left for dead, found new life through travelers, historians, preservationists, and families who refused to let it fade.

Because memory can be lost. But it can also be reclaimed.

And as we approach the 100th anniversary of Route 66, we have a chance — maybe our last — to gather the stories before they disappear.

The road may forget. But we don’t have to.

Stay on the road

Join the Route 66 Kicks list — Mother Road stories by email, and a heads-up when prints and the shop open on CarCulture.

Subscribe

Explore the series hub: carculture.com/route66/

Earlier in the series: The Mother Road We Forgot · Roadside America

Route 66 Kicks · Car Culture, Inc. · Centennial 2026–2027

© 2026 Automobilia II, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Published under license from Automobilia II, LLC.

In 1926, Route 66 wasn't a road yet. It was an idea — a line drawn across America from Chicago to Los Angeles, waiting for the country to catch up.

Some stretches were dirt. Some were gravel. Some were nothing more than wagon ruts and hope. But people drove it anyway, because Route 66 wasn't just a highway. It was a lifeline conceived from human dreams.

It carried families westward in search of work.

It carried soldiers home from war.

It carried buses full of travelers who had never seen the ocean.

It carried the dreams of a country learning to move.

And it carried stories — millions of them — told in diners, motels, filling stations, and tiny crossroads towns whose names most people have forgotten.

I haven't forgotten.

Thirty years ago, I spent considerable time driving and documenting Route 66, usually with cars of the era. I photographed the towns, the neon, the abandoned motels, the people who still remembered the road before the interstates bypassed them. I kept a diary. I collected letters from travelers who drove the Mother Road in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. Their handwriting is shaky now. Their memories are fading. Many of them are gone.

But their stories are not gone — not yet.

They live in the photographs, in the letters, in the diaries, in the postcards, in the fragments of memory that still cling to the edges of America's most mythic road.

And now, as Route 66 approaches its 100th anniversary, I feel a responsibility — maybe even an obligation — to bring those stories back into the light.

Because Route 66 is more than a road.

It's a cultural memory.

A shared inheritance.

A piece of who we are.

And like all memories, it can disappear if we don't protect it.

Why I'm Telling These Stories Now

Most of the people who lived alongside the original Route 66 — who pumped gas in the dust storms, who ran the diners, who drove the buses, and who fixed busted radiators — are our original entrepreneurs. Like Levi Strauss trying to provide durable clothing for miners during the California Gold Rush, Main Street America spontaneously arose to serve and help Americans crossing this vast country in search of something. Few are remembered by name.

But their stories matter.

Their memories matter.

Their voices matter.

And I want to build a way for those memories to persist long after we're gone.

That's why every piece of artwork in this series — every photograph, every forgotten town, every neon sign, every diary entry — is being preserved onchain. Not as a barrier, but as a safeguard. Not to complicate access, but to ensure that the stories of Route 66 can never be lost, altered, or erased.

The technology should disappear into the background.

The memories should be what shine.

So I've spent the last few months wrangling with the modern equivalent of unpaved stretches of Route 66 — integrating applications for credit card checkout, removing the need for wallets, and stripping away convoluted passwords to help ensure anyone can participate. If early travelers had to navigate dirt roads, flash floods and missing signage, today's creators navigate APIs and AI agents gone rogue. The struggle is different, but the spirit is the same. We are laying railroad track into new frontiers.

I want people to be able to read these stories easily, forever.

I want readers to be able to share their own memories.

I want this to be a living archive — a digital Mother Road.

Paragraph.com, the blockchain-based platform this article is written upon, recently added a Comments feature, and while they aren't onchain yet, they are a start. My hope is that one day, your stories — your family's stories — can be inscribed permanently alongside mine.

Because Route 66 was never just one story with one destination.

It was millions of them.

And we have a chance to preserve them together.

Mid-way through my road trip, before all the film was developed and catalogued, before I'd had time to properly reflect upon some of the amazing people I met along Route 66, I found something that changed the way I saw the Mother Road forever.

It wasn't a postcard.

It wasn't a guidebook.

It wasn't even a photograph.

It was a map.

It came to me from a man who had used it to hitchhike across the country in the late 1920s. After a magazine ran a piece about my Route 66 project, he wrote a short note, enclosed the map, and trusted it to the mail. The paper was soft from being folded and unfolded a hundred times. The ink had bled in places where rain or sweat had touched it. The edges were worn thin, like the cuffs of a well-loved jacket.

Across the top, in his own handwriting, he had scrawled:

"It sure is a long, long way, and I don't mean maybe."

That line hit me like a freight train.

It wasn't poetry.

It wasn't meant to be profound.

It was simply the truth of a young man standing on the side of the road with his thumb out, staring west toward a life he hadn't lived yet.

He wrote about sleeping along the roadside on old newspapers, using them as insulation against the cold ground. He told me about the kindness of strangers — truckers, families, servicemen — who picked him up and carried him a few miles closer to California. He told me about the things he witnessed: dust storms rolling across the plains, porch lights glowing like beacons in the night, the endless ribbon of highway stretching toward a horizon that always seemed just out of reach.

Route 66 wasn't just a road.

It was a rite of passage.

Why This Story Matters Now

As Route 66 approaches its 100th anniversary, I keep thinking about that map — about the man who hung on to it for dear life, about the road he traveled, and about the millions of stories like his that are slipping quietly out of living memory.

The man who drew that map didn't know he was creating a historical artifact.

He was just trying to get to California.

But that's how history works.

It's made by ordinary people doing ordinary things — until time turns them into something extraordinary.

Perhaps this is a reason why we celebrate centennials, to look back and reflect upon what was not possible to see at the time.

What Comes Next

Over the coming months, we'll be celebrating the Route 66 Centennial, and I'll be publishing:

• "Greetings from ..." postcards on social media commemorating the route

• Stories and letters from travelers who drove the road nearly a century ago

• Collectibles honoring small towns and crossroads for the centennial celebration

• Artwork

Each post on social media (x.com, Instagram, and Facebook) will focus on a different stretch of the road — a different town, a different family, a different moment in time. And each one will be an invitation.

An invitation to remember.

An invitation to contribute.

An invitation to help build a shared, authenticated history of America's most iconic road — and, by extension, the beginnings of our entire automotive culture.

Route 66 connected a nation.

Maybe its centennial can connect our memories, that ethereal thread that binds us all.

A Living Archive, Not a Museum

Feel free to make use of the Comments section to contribute your stories on Route 66. Hopefully, as technology unfolds I will be able to record your stories onchain too.

Because Route 66 was never just one story.

It was millions of them.

And we have a chance to build a living archive together — a digital Mother Road where memories don't fade and the voices of the past can still be heard.

Each story will be a mile marker.

Each artifact will be a piece of the road.

Each memory will be a thread in the tapestry of America's most iconic highway.

And it all begins with a hand-drawn map and a young man who wrote,

"It sure is a long, long way, and I don't mean maybe."

Route 66 Kicks is a centennial series published by Car Culture, Inc. under license from Automobilia II, LLC.

Subscribe at route66kicks.com/subscribe.

Contemporary postcard campaign artwork is labeled separately from historic materials (see note below).

Note on Route 66 Centennial postcards

The "Greetings from..." postcard fronts shared in this series and on social media are contemporary illustrations produced with AI assistance from Car Culture archive photographs and selected public-domain or openly licensed reference images (for example, U.S. Library of Congress collections and Creative Commons sources where noted). They are not vintage linen postcards and are not reproductions of any specific historic card. Where a reference image requires attribution, credits appear in the postcard campaign source log. Historic materials in this series — such as the hitchhiker's map, diary pages, and traveler letters — are described separately when published.

© 2026 Automobilia II, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

A wheel-spoke lacing pattern speaks to the priority of the automobile chassis riding upon it. Heavier touring cars have an abundance of spokes seated in a symmetrical and overlapping kaleidoscope to support the weight of a luxury car and provide smoother passenger rides.

Competition car wheel lacing strives to achieve balance and flexibility in tight corners with the least weight and often results in radial patterns with few overlapping spokes.

Examine the wheel on this 1935 Bugatti Type 59/50B Grand Prix race car, for example. There are multiple rings of spokes, with an irregular crossing pattern. Holes and teeth in the rim lighten the wheel’s weight and dissipate heat. The placement of each spoke is carefully considered.

This wheel’s attributes express the unspoken mantra uniting Ettore Bugatti, his factory craftsmen, and race car driver Robert Benoist whose skills united to build, campaign and race this recreated race car in the 1935 French Grand Prix at Montlhéry.

Without any financial sponsorship, the team pitted their Bugatti Type 59 straight-eight cylinder twin-overhead camshaft racer against the formidable German government-backed Mercedes-Benz W25Bs and Auto Unions. The epic head-to-head, wheel-to-wheel competition was a harbinger of repressed hostilities that erupted when WWII broke out.

Trilling like notes across a musical staff, the spindly spokes whistle while the large rim lightening holes sound bass tones as they whisk away heat. A perfectly balanced spoked wheel creates the aural equivalent of a shaken (not stirred) martini blend. There is a harmonious hum that comforts the driver.

Adjusting the tension on the spokes improves the roundness or trueness of the wheel to help the wheel run straight on the roadway.

Lace the spokes true and the magic of physics will let you take flight.

copyright © 2026 Automobilia II, LLC All Rights Reserved

Welcome to the Route 66 Centennial Odyssey.

This summer, we’re hitting the road together — a virtual road trip down the highways and byways of classic roadside America.

We’ll chase tourist traps, neon signs, mom-and-pop diners, forgotten motels, and the pure spirit of the Mother Road as it turns 100 years old. Along the way, we’ll drop stories, original art prints, and collectible NFTs that capture the soul of Route 66.

You’re already on the list, which means you’ll be the first to see every chapter of this journey as it unfolds.

Expect:

• Behind-the-scenes stories & lore from the Mother Road

• Early looks at upcoming collectibles

• Exclusive framed art and NFT mint alerts

• Community road trip moments

The open road is calling. Let’s make this centennial one that will live on and on and on. On blockchains,  we will send our love to the future fusing the old with the new.

Stay tuned — and if you have some particular poignant memories or favorite stops from The Mother Road be sure to share them with us along the nearest crossroads. We will try and weave it into the eight-state tour as we celebrate the small towns and birth of Car Culture.

We're tuning up the engine for that long drive. In the meantime, we will continue surfacing new icons as we prepare for the next year of celebrations.

Be sure to share with your family and fellow travelers.

The Art and Provenance of the Automobile

For weeks, I’d been ruminating about this spectacular Alfa that I had finished in the midst of an extremely busy year of assignments. It was one of those stretches in my life where someone else was in charge of my travel logistics, and I was living in a virtual storyboard of dawn and dusk automotive productions with a small team. The advance notice I had received was that I would be photographing three special vehicles for presentation to Bertone at Pebble Beach that year. There were no other details. I was handed the directions with no idea of what models I would be shooting.

When I arrived at the shoot, one of the cars was the B. A. T. 7, which I’ve never seen in person, and it completely blew my mind. I had not stopped talking about it with any of my car friends for a couple of weeks, but none of them knew anything about the car. It really set me on my heels, and I hadn’t had time to do any follow-up research. But as Matano-san and I nearly veered off the highway, his prodigious mind started spewing out facts and penetrating observations about Bertone and the BAT. It was like meeting my virtual twin.

Our relationship continued like this for many, many years. I could ping him about a particular car or something I was wondering about, and he would answer with a unique observation, as if he thought about the same thing before.

Matano-san had a very reflective view of the world and a genuine sense of humor. One of the funniest stories he told me unfolded one evening while we were in West Hollywood. He asked me to drive him to the Greyhound Bus station!

I said sure, are you going somewhere? He said he couldn’t remember where it was and he’d always wanted to go back. I was surprised at that remark, but knew exactly where the modernist bus station was in Hollywood. We pulled up to the curb and walked around a bit inside, and this story unfolded.

The time line facts may not be entirely accurate, but more or less the story has resonated in my mind because it is so poignant.

Of course, any of Tom‘s friends know that he was obsessed with automobiles his entire life. He talked frequently about his childhood and growing up in Japan. His grandmother in particular stands out as a real character in my mind from the mental sketches he painted of her, not unlike a character from Ghibli Studios animated film.

When he was preparing to make the big journey to the United States, his grandmother insisted that he get a permanent wave in his hair so that he would feel more “confident” among Americans. Of course, Tom went along with her advice because he had some trepidations about fitting in with a foreign culture. But he was completely shocked by the chemical beauty parlor smell and the results that ensued. Nevertheless, he arrived in Chicago with a lovely wave in his longish black Asian hair.

Soon thereafter, he boarded a Greyhound bus bound for Los Angeles to satisfy one of the burning ambitions of his life: to visit California. Driving across the Midwest to the Pacific Coast, gazing out the window of the Greyhound, gave him a unique and powerful understanding of America. He was utterly fascinated with the vastness of the landscape.

He arrived at the Hollywood bus station on Vine Street sometime late in the evening, well after dark. His English was very poor, and he left the station to find a place to sleep for the night.

There was a taxi close by who pulled up and opened the door. Tom mimicked to the driver that he wanted to go to sleep, and the driver floored it.

Tom wanted to recreate the journey they took that fateful night, so he directed me to drive south on Vine Street until we reached Wilshire Boulevard. There, we turned left. As I drove slowly, he gazed around and asked me to make a turn onto Western Avenue.

As I recall, Tom arrived in the United States sometime in the late 1960s, a period marked by significant societal upheaval following the Vietnam War. Assuming all Asians were similar and Tom would feel more at ease in this neighborhood, the black taxi driver pulled over and gestured with his fingers for Tom to begin walking. Tom dragged his suitcase for several blocks until he realized he had arrived in a Korean neighborhood, where he encountered considerable racial animosity. Despite his efforts, he couldn't find a hotel sign. Exhausted, he finally entered a small neighborhood grocery store.

The going was rough. He was a foreign man in a foreign country in the wrong part of town late at night. The Koreans he encountered on the street immediately recognized him as Japanese, and they were not happy about it. Some people pushed him, and after a long trudge, he was terribly frightened. He’d seen no place to stay, so he went into a small corner grocery store and tried to communicate with the owner of the store.

As we drove slowly along Western Blvd., retracing his entry to Los Angeles, Tom  remembered exactly where he was and went into the same grocery store! Thirty years or more later, the same owner was behind the counter and they had a long conversation where Tom thanked him.

The grocery store man had understood Tom’s predicament, locked his business door, and took Tom up some back stairs. He woke his wife and convinced her to let Tom sleep in their children’s room.

That’s how the world turns. Anyway, Tom was incredible. He had a force of will, a loving heart, impeccable taste, and a brilliant mind that penetrated any culture. Our common bond was the automobile, and I really admired his work. His lifetime had discipline, tons of talent, and he gave all his attention to everyone he came into contact with. His life was a positive force in this universe, and I miss him terribly, but he left us with an amazing automobile he designed, the Miata. I’d like to think of Tom back on the bus, moving onto his next adventures in Miataville. We are lucky to have known him.

P.S. I have some photos of Tom that I want to give to his brother. If anyone knows how I can send them to him, please get in touch.

Follow on X @carculture and wherever

Subscribe to follow along with our Route 66 Kicks Centennial series and stories from automotive history:

Why does Zagato’s “Z” still stop us in our tracks? The badge on the flanks of his coachbuilt cars is more than a logo—it’s a signature. This is the story of how that marque may have emerged from an idea that crossed oceans and decades: a California bandit, a masked avenger, and an Italian coachbuilder, linked by the slash of a “Z.”

Long a fan of Zagato automotive design, I often linger over its unique logo, the infamous "Z" marque emblazoned upon the side panel of many coachbuilt cars I've gazed upon over the years. Certainly, the fantastic swoosh of the "Z" has graphic appeal.

Z Marque

Z Marque - NFT (Digital Object): Collect the Classics. Cruise the Future. This limited edition NFT is part of the CarCulture: CarMania Garage collection.

https://manifold.xyz

But was it only graphic appeal? As a creator, I am a passionate observer similar in some ways to The Lady of Shalott. My shutter finger is faster than my brain, and it often takes many years of solitary, obtuse observations to weave my finished artwork and stories. Such is the case with my obsession over Zagato and his coachbuilding marque depicted as a "Z".

As a student at university, my worldview underwent a profound transformation during a class on "Intellectual History" taught by Harold Parker, one of the great thinkers I encountered during college. Professor Parker, a slight man with a brilliant mind, always had his pockets filled with fresh Lance peanut butter crackers from the vending machine. Initially, I assumed he must subsist solely on Nabs, as they were branded. However, after observing his classroom nibbling, I began bringing him small treats from my early culinary experiments. Our friendship blossomed when I baked madeleines while we were engrossed in reading Proust. I may have subtly shifted Professor Parker's worldview with my madeleines. In this classroom experience, we were equals—he contributed ideas that I still think about today, and I upgraded his snacks.

Professor Parker's European intellectual history theory held that significant cultural ideas arise simultaneously in multiple disciplines. His syllabus proved his premise through an intense examination of the Romantic movement from the 18th and 19th centuries. Ideas bubbled up from the collective unconscious and were expressed concurrently by multiple artists, mathematicians, and authors whose works continue to inform our world. This was more or less what I recall from the class, and what I believe to be true in my own life.

Many years later, I wonder if Romanticism ever ended. With recent developments in physics and entanglement theory, it is possible our understanding of Romanticism is still expanding. Modern rock lyrics even acknowledge this phenomenon.

Witness the modern song lyrics of Sting in Synchronicity 1

With one breath, with one flow

You will know

Synchronicity

A sleep trance, a dream dance,

A shared romance

Synchronicity

A connecting principle

Linked to the invisible

Almost imperceptible

Something inexpressible

Science insusceptible

Logic so inflexible

Causally connectible

Yet nothing is invincible

Synchronicity may be involved in the famous Z marque used by Zagato to brand his undulating coachbuilt cars. Was the immense popularity of a dime novel published in 1854 entitled "The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta: The Celebrated California Bandit" at the root of Zagato's chromed "Z" logo? Were they entangled like some random particle wave?

John Rollin Ridge, (whose Cherokee name was "Yellow Bird") wrote a fictional biography of the popular true-life bandit, Juan Murieta from California's Gold Rush days. This popular dime-novel,  The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta (1854) was the first book written by a Native American. The best-selling book was translated into multiple languages and hit a nerve in 19th-century Europe where multiple national conflicts ultimately exploded in the First World War.

Juan Murieta, a native Mexican from the state of Sonora, followed his older brother to California soon after gold was struck in 1848. Murieta and his beautiful young wife traveled northward to join his brother in mining gold. Their luck was good but took a tragic turn when a group of jealous white miners hijacked their rich claim after claiming Murieta stole a horse from them. In reality, Murietta's brother bought the horse for Juan.

The mob whipped Murieta while tied to a tree, gang-raped and murdered his wife in front of him, then left Murietta for dead as they tracked down his brother and hung him. Murieta vowed vengeance on his American oppressors and used his prodigious knife skills to systematically hunt members of the white mob one by one, killing them and marking their bodies with a three-stroked "Z".

Murieta's revenge on the white thieves who stole his mine and killed his family led him to begin a new life as an outlaw. He assumed the role of a witless foreigner, uninterested in money, but secretly exacting restitution on a terrified California population. The state government posted a large bounty for Murietta's head, dead or alive, and he was ultimately tracked down and killed by the California Rangers.

Murieta's legend resonated throughout culture for standing up for his human rights, despite his nationality.

Ugo Zagato was born into a world of similar nationalistic strife in 1890 near Gavello, Italy, just a few years after Karl Benz invented the first automobile--the Benz patent motor car.

Motorcar mania, a different kind of gold rush, bubbled throughout world culture alongside the conflicting nationalistic passions of Europe. The Germans were wary of the Russians, the Baltic states were splintering, and France was thunderstruck by Bismarck, but every country was intent on dominating automotive production. Sound familiar?

In 1905, after Zagato lost his father at age fifteen, he left his home in Italy for Cologne, Germany, to seek his fortune in the automotive trade. Cologne was then one of the most robust centers of vehicle and motor manufacturing in the world. The American manufacturer, Ford, also began production in Cologne soon after Zagato's arrival to keep pace with burgeoning demand for the Model T.

Zagato worked in Germany for four years as the booming new business of automobile manufacturing developed. During this interval, Germany aligned with Italy to form the Triple Alliance agreement with Austria-Hungary. Italy was always seen as the weakest member of this new military block formed for mutual defense, and perhaps Zagato felt like a second-class worker with his Italian citizenship.

The Triple Alliance opponents were opposed by a formidable block composed of Great Britain, France, and Russia. Each alliance, roughly equivalent in military power, pledged to aid one another in the event of war. Italy was the wild card, and although officially aligned with Germany, the French avidly solicited their attention. As car culture enthusiasts know, the French were the most enthusiastic adopters of the new-fangled automobile and quick to follow production after Karl Benz.

Kaiser Wilhelm's ambitions may have turned off a young Ugo Zagato, who realized the Germans were building a war machine. In 1909, Zagato returned to Italy for military service and a job at the Carrozzeria Varesina. While there, he began studying at the Santa Marta design school.

By 1915, at the ripe old age of twenty-five and the threat of war hanging overhead, Zagato began work at the Costruzioni Aerodinamiche Pomilio of Turin in the exciting new field of aerodynamics. Airplane fever engulfed a world still wrestling with profitably producing automobiles. Zagato shaped metal to flow through air, lessons similar to sword crafting where metal is folded upon itself to craft weapons of incomparable power.

In 1919, at the age of twenty-nine, Zagato established his first business as an automotive coachbuilder, hammering out the aluminum-bodied Fiat 501 on a wooden frame. The car's lightweight body, a fusion of Zagato's aviation manufacturing expertise and Italian-inspired metal sculpture, was meticulously crafted. With the motorcar now a consuming passion, Ugo Zagato's life's work was set in motion, inspired by the very essence of this transformative vehicle.

And what a life's work it was.

Idling Idol
Start Your Engine. Start Your with this edition — Ethereum (Layer 1)
1931 Alfa Romeo 6C 1750 Gran Sport Zagato

Now we return to Murietta's legend, still percolating in society's unconscious, but given new life when Señor Zorro, a character created in 1919 by Los Angeles-based pulp fiction writer Johnston McCulley, was featured as a serialized set of published stories derived from the Murietta fable in "All-Story Weekly".

Thus, Zorro leapt off the page into the global psyche as a sensational new superhero certain to capture the young Zagato's attention. Most importantly, Zorro expressed himself as an individual over any nationalistic dogma. He "signed his deeds" with three deft cuts of his sword or bullwhip, an act that surely engaged the mind of Zagato whose own logo bears a remarkable resemblance to Zorro's branding.

Flashing and blazing across the world, Ugo Zagato signed his distinctive coachbuilt cars at the end of World War II with a marque that summarized all of Zoro's emotional impact.

In the post-World War I era, Zagato's knowledge of aerodynamics and coachbuilding helped Italy gain recognition as a significant auto manufacturer. His novel production techniques changed the way automobiles could be designed. Nicola Romeo, head of Alfa Romeo, called upon Zagato to produce the Alfa Romeo P2 alongside Vittorio Jano and Enzo Ferrari. The Alfa Romeo P2 won all Grand Prix races for Italy in 1924 and 1925.

Sometime in the 1930s, Zagato began signing his innovative designs with the unique "Z" brand on the Alfa Romeo 6C 1500 (which won the Mille Miglia four times), followed quickly by the fabulous swooping fender lines of the lightweight and aerodynamic Alfa Romeo 6C 1750 in 1929. The renowned "Zagato" coachbuilding badge evolved into the more formidable blazing "Z" metallic signature of a master coachbuilding firm as the onset of World War II drew nearer.

In 1937, like a phoenix rising from the ashes of the Depression, Zagato delivered the Fiat 500 A, the Topolino, to a continent of customers seeking affordable transportation after the ravages of the Great Depression, and post WWII, Ugo and his sons partnered with Abarth to produce the Fiat Abarth which won the Compasso d'Oro for its industrial design excellence. My favorite design innovation of all was the "double bubble" rooftop Zagato designed to accommodate hat-wearing gentlemen who drove lovely coupés with panache and verve.

Ugo Zagato was a genius at hammering out solutions to customers' unique requirements. In the process, I have to believe he realized himself in every handbuilt car he built -- the inimitable "Z".

Grazie, Zagato! We're on your tail.

Salute ! Collect this edition — Base (Layer 2, USD checkout).

Seeing Red

Seeing Red - NFT (Digital Object): Seeing Red

https://manifold.xyz

copyright (c) 2026 Automobilia II, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

At Car Culture we’re on our own Grand Tour: we entertain, explore, and help secure the story behind remarkable cars and the people who made them. Just as Zagato signed his work with a “Z,” we care how these objects are signed, owned, and passed on. Follow us for more tales from the crossroads of design, history, blockchains and provenance.

Visit us at carmania.carculture.com

https://x.com/carculture

t h e A r t o f t h e A u t o m o b i l e

Hot Christmas

Hot Christmas - NFT (Digital Object): Hot Tamales, Hot Christmas

https://manifold.xyz

Excerpt below from the poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas" by Clement C. Moore, 1823

"Now, Dasher!, Now, Dancer!, Now, Prancer! and Vixen!
On, COMET! on CUPID! on, DONNER and BLITZEN!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"

May Rudolph light your way into a wondrous New Year!

Merry Christmas to All
And to All a Good Night!


Original image capture at another roadside attraction in South Carolina.

In the beginning was the Word, then the word was sung; first by a man striding alone across the earth and later by armies marching into battle. Song and music were written by poets, composed by musicians, and performed by artists in celebration of life and death. We chanted and harmonized what we could not see.

In 2025, we call it vibing or streaming if you want to add the visual cue too. Everyone hums together in the key of C. Hmmm…

Scientists eventually entered the act and began questioning the nature of sound. Is there a relationship between electricity and magnetism? How do pigeons navigate?

Do we change our vibrational frequency when we sing?

Mankind sang and thought until James Clark Maxwell postulated the existence of electromagnetic waves, later proven and ultimately transmitted (pun intended) by Heinrich Hertz between 1887 and 1890.

Marconi invented the radio, a device to wirelessly transmit electromagnetic waves leading ultimately to Reginald Fessenden broadcasting the first public radio transmission on Christmas Eve in 1906.

Followers of Car Culture will know automotive history pulsed in tune with wireless technology during this transformative era. Wireless transmission and automobiles were joined at the hip (so to speak) when we embedded radios into our automotive dashboards. We were on a roll, and oh what a ride it was.

By the mid-1940s, we could sometimes listen to the radio as we drove through the world, gazing through our windshields endlessly, twirling the radio dial for powerful frequencies broadcast from remote stations. Sound frequencies were our beacons. Radio frequencies simultaneously drove the world through World War II. But when radios became embedded in our automotive dashboards and homes, they served a different purpose; they raised our collective consciousness.

Although we drove the white line, the radio vibes guided us on another journey, uncharted by any published map. Anyone who is a musician or an avid driver knows that vibrations excite certain areas of our brain, leading to insightful moments. That’s why we take long drives or immerse ourselves in music—to find the answer.

Scientists began taking note of the effect music had on our brain, and sometime after the birth of rock and roll, scientists began to formally investigate if there was a relationship between electromagnetism and consciousness. Time passed.

Money, media, celebrity, and the rise of the advertising model next entered the equation. Wurlitzers, jukeboxes, and transistor radios tickled our auditory canals when we were outside our automobile.

Science + Art = Money

Radio was always an “upsell” accessory in the early automobile marketplace, but once the radio became widely available, the advertising model ruled. Mass entertainment was embraced, and eventually, the motoring public found the AM-FM bandwidth wanting. The music industry pushed the development of the ad-free music cassette, and by the end of the 1960s, a plethora of different music devices were competing for dashboard space.

The history of technology is illustrated in the displays of the 20th-century automotive dashboard, like the illustration accompanying this article entitled, ‘Electromagnetism’. This 1948 Plymouth radio has it all: a kind of Swiss-army knife convenience dispenser. Analog clock, pushbuttons, knobs to pull and twirl, with fiber covering the speaker to let the radio waves flow unobstructed. In 1948, as the world was regrouping at the end of WWII, radios became a soothing balm on shattered nerves and psyches.

The number one top hit in 1948 was “Nature Boy”, by Nat King Cole.

“There was a boy, a very strange enchanted boy, they say he wandered very far over land and sea…a little sad, but very wise was he. And then one magic day, he passed my way, we spoke of many things, but this he said to me,

The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is to love and be loved in return.

One of ten NFTs, ready to mint...

Electromagnetism

Electromagnetism - NFT (Digital Object): Electromagnetism guides us on our way.

https://manifold.xyz

Through the radio, song and music tickling the EMF fields surrounding us, our collective consciousness began to heal from the horrors of WWII. We drove forward into new realities.

"It is worth noting that most physicalist theories of consciousness boil down to a type of EM field theory of consciousness, whether or not this is acknowledged. This is the case because the atomic basis of the material comprising our brains, our bodies, and our biosphere is intrinsically electromagnetic.

The specific role of EM fields in the brain has been debated for many years, with some scholars maintaining the view that they are largely or entirely epiphenomenal – like the proverbial train whistle on a steam-powered locomotive – and other scholars viewing them as integral to the workings of consciousness.

The General Resonance Theory (GRT) of consciousness, described in that paper, may be viewed as a type of electromagnetic theory of consciousness and posits that electromagnetic (EM) fields may be the primary seat of consciousness.

This research adds to the EM field theories of consciousness by highlighting the fundamental physics of neurons and glial cells in the brain, suggesting that a deeper investigation into the electromagnetic fields at the cellular scale could offer insights into the mechanisms of consciousness.”

—Excepted from Electromagnetic field theories of consciousness: opportunities and obstacles
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2023.1342634/full

Layer upon layer of meaning has revealed itself through electromagnetism. Let us not forget our artists. Throughout the journey, poets have illuminated our journey, perhaps none better than our musicians. Joni Mitchell’s “ You Turn Me On, I’m a Radio” is perhaps the wittiest lyrics written about the artist’s quest to write a hit song and light up the Top 40 charts.

Driving into town

With a dark cloud above you

Dial in the number

Who's bound to love you

Oh honey, you turn me on

I'm a radio

I'm a country station.

I'm a little bit corny.

I'm a wild wood flower

Waving for you.

Broadcasting tower

Waving for you.

And I'm sending you out

This signal here.

I hope you can pick it up

Loud and clear.

I know you don't like weak women.

You get bored so quick.

And you don't like strong women?

'Cause they're hip to your tricks.

It's been dirty for dirty

Down the line.

But you know,

I come when you whistle.

When you're loving and kind.

If you've got too many doubts,

If there's no good reception for me,

Then tune me out, 'cause honey,

Who needs the static?

It hurts the head.

And you wind up cracking.

And the day goes dismal

From "Breakfast Barney"

To the sign-off prayer.

What a sorry face you get to wear.

I'm gonna tell you again now,

If you're still listening there.

If you're driving into town

With a dark cloud above you.

Dial in the number.

Who's bound to love you?

If you're lying on the beach

With the transistor going.

Kick off the sand flies, honey.

The love's still flowing.

If your head says forget it,

But your heart's still smoking,

Call me at the station.

The lines are open.

Songwriter: Joni Mitchell

In the 21st century, we have a new dashboard. It’s the cellular device in your hand. Old dog; new tricks. Glass with no knobs. Do you want to drive it? Stream music?

Art still twiddles the electromagnetic dials. Am I raising your consciousness? You may be happy to know that some seventy years later, scientists believe that consciousness may be a quantum problem. Turn up the volume and let that electromagnetism rip.

Tune in with us as we celebrate automotive dashboards, many of which are adorned with radios.

‎The Dashboard

A lavishly illustrated book for the car lover in everyone's life! Every time we open the car door and slide behind the steering wheel, we face the most important automotive focal point of all-the dashboard. This is where we make our most essential and intimate contact with the car. Array...

https://books.apple.com

You can download THE DASHBOARD now on iBooks, by tapping the button below. Once you arrive in iTunes, you can either choose to purchase the book for $14.99, or you can gift it to another car lover in your life.

Poof! Your holiday shopping is over.

Car Culture • the Art of the Automobile

Get it or Gift It--THE DASHBOARD

Sing along with us as you drive along.

“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is to love and be loved in return.

For young aristocrats from the British Empire, the Grand Tour was a rite of passage in the 17th and 18th centuries. Education was a privilege reserved for the privileged few, who could afford to hire private tutors. These tutors were now eager to take their protégés abroad, across the English Channel to France, and perhaps further south into Italy. Their goal was to allow their students to witness and experience firsthand the wonders of art and architecture from earlier epochs.

As was customary, travelers on the Grand Tour traveled by boat and horse-drawn carriages. However, by the end of the 19th century, a revolution in transportation was underway. Young James Starley from Coventry, England, completed his ride around the world on a high-wheeler bicycle, the Ordinary, in 1886.

Only four years later, Europe and America had approximately forty different automotive manufacturers and 10,000 automobiles on the road. A new class of tinkerers, the engineers, began experimenting. In retrospect, this cultural shift in transportation was not unlike the Cambrian explosion or the birth of the Internet. In all major technology upheavals, change is inevitable, bringing both pain and progress.

As chronicled in Spinning Around the World, while Starley was pedaling his Ordinary around the world, budding engineers were fitting steam-powered engines to tricycles in an attempt to achieve faster speeds with reduced effort. Cornelius Vanderbilt was enamored with these early 'motorcycles' and became one of the first and most enthusiastic American automobilistas as engineers shifted their focus to developing four-wheeled vehicles. Vanderbilt became instrumental in bringing the thrill of motoring to the United States and helped kick off innovation by sponsoring the Vanderbilt Cup races and building the Long Island Motor Parkway in New York State, designed solely for automobiles.

In 1886, when Starley returned to the United States, his starting point on his own Global Grand Tour atop his Ordinary bicycle, Karl Benz had completed work on the first motorcar, the Benz Patent Motor Car.

Ordinary

Ordinary - NFT (Digital Object): Invented in 1870 by James Starley of Coventry, England, the two-wheeled Ordinary bicycle changed the world.collection. Collect the Classics. Cruise the Future.

https://manifold.xyz

Wheels were turning everywhere, both mentally and mechanically. Imagine the mind-blowing experience it must have been for the few who witnessed Bertha Benz, accompanied by her two sons, driving her husband Karl's groundbreaking invention, the 1886 Benz Patent Motorcar. Bertha swiped the car from the family garage and embarked on an exhilarating adventure with her sons. She was determined to visit her mother, but they had no maps, no petrol stations, and no roads to guide them. Instead, they relied solely on their unwavering belief in their automobile. Their appearance in a motorized vehicle was awe-inspiring, and the human desire to drive spread like wildfire, captivating the hearts of everyone who witnessed their journey.

By the early 1890s, motorcars began to dominate the Grand Tour. The illustration accompanying this story, depicting an 1896 Panhard et Levassor 8 hp Dos-a-Dos Wagonette in a public square, suggests the transformative impact of the 1896 Paris-Marseilles-Paris race on public culture. Panhard et Levassor were one of the earliest automotive manufacturers. Mr. Levassor obtained an engine patent from Mr. Daimler in 1890 that catapulted French automotive production forward.

The Grand Tour

The Grand Tour - NFT (Digital Object): Imagine the exhilaration of traveling in private automobiles during the 1890s. At that time, there were only a handful of motorized vehicles on the road. Automobiles parked in city squares undoubtedly drew a great deal of attention.

https://manifold.xyz

Imagine the thrill of traveling in private automobiles during the 1890s. Back then, only a few motorized vehicles graced the roads, and their presence in city squares undoubtedly drew a lot of attention. Driving on a paved or hard-packed surface was a cherished pleasure for automotive enthusiasts. Parking in the public square for an overnight stay on a new version of the Grand Tour is not difficult to believe. Can you imagine the attraction and fascination it created in the general public?

The initial fascination with the automobile quickly turned to hatred as wealthy owners transformed into speed demons, barreling down dirt roads through the countryside. Farmers and peasants living in that region were terrified for their livestock and their families' lives as aristocrats galloped down country lanes, terrorizing both four-legged and two-legged creatures. A battle was afoot between automobile owners, and those who dwelt alongside the primary transportation routes needed for traditional horse and wagon drayage.

The French were initially the most wildly enthusiastic audience for automobiles. Their visionary idea of the automobile's potential led to numerous crucial investments that propelled automotive innovation forward. As cars grew in popularity and affordability, more and more motorcars began appearing along the French Riviera. Wealthy villa owners with pristine views over the Mediterranean were infuriated by the clouds of dust kicked up from spinning tires. They pushed back. Landowners couldn’t remove the right-of-ways, so roadways received an upgrade.

The battle over automobiles began as a socialist uprising against the wealthy who owned and drove automobiles freely, causing chaos for the general population who lacked the means to own them. The war against automobiles was fought through licenses, regulations, fines, and advice for automotive owners to carry pistols while traveling. Finally, a new wave of innovation emerged: paving or oiling roads to reduce the resulting dust clouds.

As automobiles became more affordable, the Grand Tour iterated and expanded rapidly, attracting more independent tourists. The early automotive adventurers weren't just taking the Grand Tour for the rite of passage, the educational experiences, and the newfound freedoms that traveling on the continent offered. Half the fun of taking the Grand Tour at the turn of the twentieth century was the thrill of motoring.

At Car Culture, we embark on an extraordinary and intricate journey into the world of blockchains. Our mission is to entertain, explore and secure the provenance of some remarkable automotive and cultural innovations. Follow us on our own Grand Tour.

CAR CULTURE

preserving the Art of the Automobile onchain for future generations

https://buymeacoffee.com

Reference:

A Brief History of Motion by Tom Standage. Bloomsbury Publishing. Copyright © 2021 by Tom Standage.

The Voyage of Italy, by Richard Lassels, published in 1670

There is nothing ‘ordinary’ about this 1890 Clipper Light Roadster Bicycle, an early high-wheeler, frequently referred to as a Penny-Farthings or Ordinary. Invented in 1870 by James Starley of Coventry, England, the two-wheeled Ordinary bicycle changed the world. The Penny-Farthings’ pedals were directly attached to the front wheels, and each turn of the pedal took the rider forward 13 feet. Larger wheels allowed the passenger to go further with less energy expended, a physics axiom with profound implications.

The Ordinary had a high center of gravity that made the rider prone to taking a "header" over the handlebars if the wheels hit something that caused the wheels to stop turning. Despite this catapulting peril, the wheels of change began turning. By 1883, the Cyclists’ Touring Club of Britain had over 10,000 members yearning to pedal about town. Ideas for the development of new bicycle designs and motorbikes spurred innovations in this emotionally turbulent era.

The Light Roadster Ordinaries targeted younger customers and were offered in wheel sizes from 48” to 60” to accommodate the varying heights of different riders. Several of the early American bicycle manufacturers also tinkered with four-wheeled automobiles, and because of this duality, Light Roadster badges appeared on both automobiles and bicycles for a brief time period. Early motoring manufacturers, such as the Pope Company, aspired to lure their bicycling customers to the company’s more expensive four-wheeled vehicles.

In America, the center of bicycling mania was Boston, Massachusetts. This particular Ordinary is badged as a Clipper Light Roadster and is believed to have been manufactured by the Overman Wheel Company of Boston.

One of the shocking social ramifications of the Ordinary craze was that women began casting off their long skirts and donning pants to ride the newfangled contraptions. Pants were an exhilarating new-found freedom for the female sex and added impetus to the burgeoning women's suffrage movement, a trend that some bicycle manufacturers later regretted, although they gained more customers.

While women held assemblies for the right to vote, Thomas Stevens, 29, an avid sportsman, set off from San Francisco in April 1884 with the lofty goal to bicycle alone around the world. No one had even crossed the United States on a bicycle during this period, and Stevens found the going very tough as he fought his way eastward across the Great Plains.

CAR CULTURE

preserving the Art of the Automobile onchain for future generations

https://buymeacoffee.com

What a ride it was. Few roads existed in America, and he resorted to carrying his 1883 Columbia Expert Ordinary with its solid tires almost half of the journey. When he was lucky, he could ride down the center of railroad tracks that were still being laid across the vast plains. His daily target was to cover 40 miles a day, but he was hard-pressed to meet his goal on several occasions.  He carried with him only a small case containing his journal, matches, map, and a folded piece of canvas that he could use to shelter himself. The cross-country trek took four months, but in August, a footsore Stevens arrived in Boston, took a winter break in New York, then sailed across the Atlantic to resume his grand tour.

Ordinary

Ordinary - NFT (Digital Object): Invented in 1870 by James Starley of Coventry, England, the two-wheeled Ordinary bicycle changed the world.collection. Collect the Classics. Cruise the Future.

https://manifold.xyz

As bicycling was more popular on the European continent, Stevens had many bicycling enthusiasts helping him on his journey eastward from Liverpool across France and Germany until he reached the outskirts of Kurdistan and Turkey. People there were less familiar with machinery, and their immense curiosity slowed his progress as people demanded to understand how this new invention worked. Not speaking the local languages, he was forced to provide ample demonstrations and even allowing some to ride his precious transportation before he was allowed to travel eastward.

The sudden appearance of a Raj’s magnificent road running from Peshawar to Calcutta spurred Steven’s enthusiasm to pedal the length of the private road despite the debilitating midday heat. Servants of the Raj’s revitalized Stevens from his heat stroke with a complimentary brandy and soda. From Calcutta, he boarded another boat for the long trip to Hong Kong.

Although Stevens could more easily imagine his journey’s end from the relative comfort of Hong Kong, the reality of crossing China by bicycle was clearly a daunting task. His bicycle’s alien machinery brought suspicion and fear from the Chinese, and government officials objected to the mobs Stevens’s bicycle attracted. To solve the standoff between the government and the crowds, Stevens was taken by boat to Shanghai, where he could more easily access Japan, the final leg of his great journey. 

Fortunately, his presence in Nagasaki, Japan, was politely welcomed and celebrated. It seemed the best was saved for last. Bicycling was a pleasure in Japan. The enthusiastic hospitality of the Japanese accompanied Stevens all the way to his departure port, Yokohama. 

When Stevens arrived in San Francisco, his global trek—from 1884 to 1886—was complete, but his trip gave global residents a glimpse of future transportation that proved unstoppable. Thomas Stevens was the first man to bicycle around the world.

Anyone else up for a ride?

A great read, the source material for this article is “Wheeling Around the World” by Macmillan Publishing Company, a book based off Thomas Stevens’s two-volume account of his epic journey, Around the World on a Bicycle.

© copyright 2025 Automobilia II, LLC. All Rights Reserved.