I'm not a car buff. I know where the motor is and that's about it. But I couldn't help being fascinated by this new collection The New York Public Library has on Flickr. The new collection, "G.M. and Chrysler Cars and Trucks, 1897-1938" contains hundreds of photos and is available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/nypl/collections/72157619203531284/.

Like I said, I don't know much about cars but I do like old pictures and old technology. The pictures are divided into several sets, including "Four Decades of Oldsmobiles" (starting in 1897!) and "G.M. Truck Company" (love those truck cabs from the 30s.) As most of these pictures are archival, they're a good size and it's easy to zoom in and grab details.

Most of these pictures are marked as "No known copyright restrictions" so you should be able to reproduce them. (That made me wonder: since some of the car companies got bailed out by the government, what happened to their intellectual property? Does it belong to the taxpayers now? Who owns the trademarks of various car brand names?) WRAL won't let me embed a slide show but I did grab a few of my favorite pictures and I'm including them with this blog post. Vroom!