This wonderful, narrated video details a trip made by a group of friends from England, throughout Africa, and back in 1959/60.
Archives for category: — Vintage
If you’re at home, and you have some time on your hands, check out this 1986 documentary about the Paris-Dakar Rally. You may remember that that was the year Porsche got their rally program dialed and pulled off a 1-2 finish with their newly-developed 959. There’s some great footage of the 959s in action across Africa.
This video, touting the suitability of the venerable Unimog 421 for military use, captures some great off-road footage. There’s the standard test-track stuff but also some great shots of it out in the wild climbing waterfalls and the like (presumably before “tread lightly” was a thing). The Unimog 421 was manufactured between 1966 and 1989. Judging by the video’s soundtrack, this footage is from the early side of that production run. The video is in German but YouTube offers an auto-translated captions if you click the gear wheel in the lower-right corner of the frame.
The overlanding worlds’s favorite sometimes-prickly off-road expert, Andrew St.Pierre White takes you on a deep dive into the realm of 4×4 driving skills in this full-length, vintage video. Driving in all terrain types is covered, as well as driving a classic 4×4 set-up and how it differs from more modern, computer-controlled 4x4s.
This video made by YouTube user Robbie Bircher‘s dad back in 1989, offers a rare glimpse of basically stock trucks navigating one of America’s most difficult 4×4 routes, the Rubicon Trail. Along for the ride are a couple of Jeep CJs, a Toyota Land Cruiser FJ40, and an International Scout.
The pace of the video is slow but you feel like you’re there. And thankfully it’s been stabilized so you don’t have to sit through any camera shake. Really good stuff.
It’s a bit ’80s, but there’s some good stuff here. The video covers pretty much everything: how to cross muddy slopes, ditches, water fording, hills, v-shaped gullies, towing, driving ruts and rocky terrain. All of the sections are done by two Defenders, one doing the right thing, the other the wrong thing.
As an added bonus, the video shows what has been selected in vehicles’ transfer case and transmission via a little Atarti-style graphic.
This film from the 1960s shows the then popular sport of motorcycle scrambling, which eventually would turn into enduro. It’s a fun little film.
The other day I posted about the Africa Twin and its 25-year history. Today I have some vintage video for you of both the 650 and 750 versions of the bike in its glory days.
The first two videos are in French but the appeal is universal. Same goes for the last one of a Africa Twin 750 starting up. Read the rest of this entry »
Ocean liners are the largest vehicles ever used for public travel. For example, The Michelangelo, the sistership of the one in the video, was as long as three football fields and weighed as about as much as 262 Jumbo Jets (747s). That many jets could carry could carry about 109,000 passengers, while the ship could carry only 1775. That left a lot of extra space for restaurants, casinos, and mechanical-horse exercise equipment (as you’ll see).
Of course, liners couldn’t compete with jets. This film was made in 1967 as the ocean liner era was coming to an end. It looks like it was an amazing way to travel.
Actually, you still can still travel that way, if you’d like. The QE2 QM2 makes the trip from New York to Southampton in seven days. Fares start at about $1,000/person for an inside stateroom.