Petrol & Ink / The index
Find your subject.
Look up a technical question, follow a car story or find an artwork.
The car
What is a hot hatch?
A hot hatch is an ordinary small hatchback given a much stronger engine and a firmer, sharper chassis. Nobody certifies the label, which is why the arguments never end.
The car
What is a JDM car?
JDM stands for Japanese Domestic Market. Literally it describes where a car, part or specification was built to be sold: inside Japan, rather than exported.
The car
What is a supercar?
A supercar is an extreme performance car, expensive and built in small numbers. There is no threshold of power, price or speed that officially makes one.
The car
What is engine displacement?
Displacement is the total volume all of an engine's pistons sweep through in one stroke, quoted in litres or cubic centimetres. It is a measure of size.
The car
What is horsepower?
Horsepower is a unit of power, meaning a measure of how fast work is done. One horsepower is 550 foot-pounds per second, which is about 745.7 watts.
The car
What is the difference between torque and horsepower?
Torque is a force that twists. Horsepower is a rate at which work gets done. Engine speed is what connects them, and it is why the two peak at different points.
The car
What is torque in a car?
Torque is turning force. In a car it is the twisting effort the engine makes at its crankshaft, quoted in pound-feet in the UK or newton-metres elsewhere.
Product or collection
1930: The Roadster
One continuous line on cream paper - sweeping wings, spare wheel, a single red accent. First of the Silhouette Era set.
Product or collection
1965: The Coupe
The long-bonneted fastback GT in one confident line, teal accent on the wheel arc. Second of the set.
Product or collection
1985: The Wedge
Pop-up lamps and sharp angles - the eighties wedge in a single stroke, red accent on the wing. Third of the set.
Product or collection
1995: The Icon
The nineties performance coupe - smooth canopy, big rear wing - drawn in one line. Fourth of the set.
Product or collection
Aerodynamica
Wind-tunnel poetry: cyan streamlines flowing over a wedge-era supercar silhouette.
Product or collection
Apex at Dawn
A 1930s open-wheel racer crests the hill at sunrise, dust trailing. Grand-prix romance in ochre, cream and signal red.
Product or collection
Art deco was the last time cars and buildings agreed.
For about fifteen years in the 1930s, the people drawing cars and the people drawing skyscrapers were chasing the same idea: speed as a shape. Streamlining, stepped geometry, sunbursts, chrome lines going nowhe…
Product or collection
Art for a wall that gets used.
A garage is not a small living room. It is colder, damper, dustier, the lighting is overhead and unkind, and the wall is usually breeze block or bare plaster. Five pictures made for it, and the practical part t…
Product or collection
Canvas is not just paper with texture.
Canvas changes two things: it takes the glazing away, and it puts a weave under the picture. The first is why it exists. The second is why it suits some of the collection and actively damages the rest, which is…
Product or collection
Car art for a room that has enough going on.
Most car prints are loud, and in a lot of houses that is the problem rather than the appeal. These four are the quiet option: one continuous ink line each, warm cream paper, one accent colour, and a great deal …
Product or collection
Car art, and which kind you actually want.
Twenty-eight pictures in six visual languages. They are not variations on one idea, they are six different arguments about what a car is: a shape, a machine, a memory, a mood. This page is the map, so you can g…
Product or collection
Car blueprints, drawn as drawings.
A blueprint is a way of looking at a car that a photograph cannot manage: it shows the parts you never see, in the order an engineer thinks about them. Four of them here, white linework on deep cyanotype blue, …
Product or collection
Car gifts for men, from a shop with no men's range.
This is one of the most searched phrases in the category, and it is worth being honest about what it is. It is a shopping category, not a taste. Nothing about liking cars is male, and dividing a catalogue that …
Product or collection
Deco Grand Tourer
A streamlined 1930s grand tourer in full Art Deco splendour - gold, black and emerald, chrome speed lines and a bold geometric sunburst.
Product or collection
Deco Metropolis
An elegant coupe before stepped Art Deco skyscrapers and a stylised moon. Midnight blue, gold and cream.
Product or collection
Deco Riviera
An open roadster on the corniche above a geometric sea and a distant liner. 1930s travel-poster glamour.
Product or collection
Endurance
Dusk on the long straight. A 1960s prototype, twin headlamps blazing, settles in for the night hours.
Product or collection
Grand prix art, and the licence question.
A print of a real car in a real season's colours is licensed merchandise: the marks and the liveries belong to the people who own them, and a licence fee sits inside the price. We do not hold a licence, so this…
Product or collection
Kanjo Glow
Top deck, empty multi-storey, 1am. Sodium light and teal shadow on a nineties coupe.
Product or collection
Midnight Expressway
Tail-light ribbons sweep toward the skyline from the top of the elevated road. Night drive, no destination.
Product or collection
Neon Rain
A low coupe on a rain-slicked street, magenta and cyan smeared in the wet. The city hums.
Product or collection
One line, and nowhere to hide.
A silhouette removes paint, chrome, badges, light and detail, and leaves only proportion. That is why it is the hardest kind of car drawing to get right, and why a good one is recognisable from across a room wh…
Product or collection
One question, one answer.
The problem with a grid of car gifts is that everything on it looks plausible, so nothing is chosen. This page does the opposite. Work out which of five things you actually know about the person and follow that…