Vintage Car Print - The Tattersfield Baron Special - The Streamliner of Bellytank Racers - Late 1940s

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Treasures from THE AUTOMOTIVE COLLECTION at Lost Highways Archive & Research Library. By exclusive arrangement with The Grand Review.

Print size 18 x 24, and consciously formatted to work with a standard size store bought frame, or custom framed as you see fit.

There are a handful of bellytank racers around today. A SMALL handful. Originally put together to take advantage of the availability of spare fuel tanks used for distance runs by bombers and fighters in WWII, these innovative rigs were about as cool as you can get, car wise. As comically tall as I am, even if offered the opportunity to sit in one of these gems, I'd have to pass.

The Holy Grail of the bellytank racers... the 'one that got away'... was and is The Tattersfield Baron Special. There are clues to what might have become of it, and considerable detective work has been done by a number of determined folks trying to find any part of it in ANY condition but so far... only smoke on the horizon of a dream. It remains lost.

L.A. based Bobby Green has one, and there is one on display at the Henry Ford Museum. Look them up on line, and for real background try looking up 'drop tank' on Wikipedia. Enjoy!


This photo has been our collection for years, but only recently resurfaced as we reconfigure the 1930s wood lined gentleman's lair which is the 2nd floor of our 1890s carriage house studio, and prepare to move the restoration work from the studio in the main house back to what promises to be an even crazier cornucopia of delightfully kooky eye candy.

Yes, we added the kooky outer space sky, because why the hell not?

• Handmade item
• Materials: Art stock enhanced matte paper, archival ink
• Made to order
• Only ships within United States.

SHIPPING

All prints are shipped in a sturdy mailing tube for $8, which covers postage, tube and S & H.

BUYING MORE THAN ONE PRINT? Add a second print or any number thereafter of this or any other prints in our catalog and shipping is still just $8, total!!!

International shipping is available and reasonable. Please contact us for details.

A NOTE ON OUR PROCESS, OUR CHOICES AND THE QUALITY OF THE GRAPHIC CRAFTSMANSHIP THAT GOES INTO OUR PRINTS.

Every print we deem exciting enough to present to the public via our Etsy store or available here at our studio has gone through a number of steps. The first of those is always discovering and falling in love with an obscure image, always an original that we can hold in our hands. That image is speaking to us, sometime screaming “Don’t leave me here. See what I am, what I was, what I can be, what I SHOULD be!”

There is a real sense of excitement involved, and a great many smiles and knowing grins when we make that deal and bring that ancient print, that battered photo, that scrap of ephemera that contains some scrap of genius from an unknown commercial artist home with us, knowing already how we mean to approach its restoration.

There is the heady promise of a further hunt just as real as what drags a weekend fisherman out of bed at 3AM to work a favorite brook as we start our research, looking for that great backstory, and both ready and willing to tumble down as many rabbit holes as are revealed to us to get that story.

Then there is a meticulous digital restoration that is as often as much fun as riding a vintage Moto Guzzi on a winding coastal road. I don’t care if that sounds crazy, it really is like jumping in the saddle! So many choices, so many chances to take to subtly or spectacularly give new life to otherwise permanently obscure images.

This dedication and the ongoing rush of joy in the accomplishment of it, and the opportunity to share the results in our studio and here on Etsy, is the fire of passion that keeps these engines roaring. We make every effort to ensure our customers are not just satisfied but thrilled, and we happily stand 100% behind our work.