Antique Car Print - John Cobb - The Railton - Famous Land Speed Record Car

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.

John Cobb bolted into the cockpit of the Railton, one of the most famous land speed record cars of all time.

The photographer knew exactly what mood he or she was going for here. Mr. Cobb could just as easily be on his way to outer space, underwater or to the center of the Earth. Instead, he is steeling himself for what would be one more of several important land speed records in one of the most beautiful and to this day one of the most recognizable vehicles in history.

John Cobb set the land speed record in 1938, 1939 and again in 1947 in this very car, the Railton Special. The look captured here of a man ready to risk all in the pursuit of a dangerous dream, poised at the ready, knowing that today he may triumph or die, or both, takes on a further spooky prescience when one consider his final record.

In 1952, on a very famous run on Loch Ness in a jet powered boat, John Cobb set the water speed record at the precise moment his boat hit just the tiniest ripple on the water and disintegrated into a million pieces, killing him instantly.

Still, this photograph draws you in in such a way that you have an instant relationship with the dreams and passions and triumphs and failures of all human beings and serves, as so many of our works do, as a compelling invitation to step through a portal into a moment in history.

• 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!!!

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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.