Let the Car Move
The Velocity Collective imagined the Blackbird 66 a decade ago, and now it finally moves. Paul Pfanner on making the spot in half a Sunday, and the Dan Gurney question behind it.
Full Send
People asked Paul Pfanner if he'd lost it. Here's his answer: a full album written from scratch and six music videos, plus what he learned about where people fit in a world of AI. The real Paul closes it out himself. The kid in the picture had a lot to do with it. Updated October 5 with the full album and new videos.
What 1979 Tells Detroit About 2026
In Part 2 of his Cold Read series on the oil price crisis, Bill Sparks goes back to 1979, when gas lines opened the door for Japanese automakers and the quotas meant to stop them built a stronger competitor instead.
The Race Beyond the Race
Paul Pfanner closes his six-part series on what should come after IndyCar's IR-28. With the sport's audience growing fast on FOX, he argues the next Indy car should be an instrument of human expression, one that lets fans see the driver, for a series ready to upshift to the next gear.
Why Aren't Americans Buying EVs?
Bill Sparks digs into why North American EV sales fell 33% in August even as gas hit $4.47 a gallon. The answer isn't the one you've been hearing.
Last Man Standing
Paul Pfanner spent a career in motorsport and media and never made music. Then a fake AI “artist” got under his skin, and he answered it by building a 16-song album with his own lyrics, and a 4-minute, 33-scene music video in under a month. What a machine can make, and the one thing it can't fake.
State of the Art Branding Case Studies
In the final post of his series on branding in the age of AI, Bill Sparks asks the practical question the first seven built toward: who's actually doing this well? From Nike to a neighborhood bakery, the answer looks surprisingly consistent.
The Driver
Chip Ganassi just passed Roger Penske for the most championships in IndyCar history. Paul Pfanner on the racer behind the record, and why he is nowhere near done.
Marque Down
The car brands you grew up with are being repriced all at once, and the sport that depends on them hasn't gotten the invoice yet. Paul Pfanner on Porsche, the yen, China, and a pattern he has watched form before.
How the Ad Industry Is Reinventing Itself
The agency-of-record era that ran for a century is coming apart. In part seven of his branding series, Bill Sparks tracks what the industry's biggest players are doing as the ground shifts, and what it means for anyone trying to keep a brand's story straight.
The Big Idea: Lessons in Transformative Growth
Bill Long on the big ideas that reinvent an industry, from a brick racetrack built in 1909 to IndyCars running the streets of Washington, DC in 2026, and why playing it safe carries a real risk of its own.
It Was Never Just the Car, It’s Who gets the Seat
Paul Pfanner published the magazines you grew up on. Fifth in his series on the next IndyCar, on the half of the question the IR-28 can't answer: who still reaches the seat.
The Rule Nobody Writes Down
In 1978, a young art director with almost no racing experience talked his way into a 550-horsepower Can-Am car. Paul Pfanner on the lifelong pattern that day set off, why stepping outside your lane draws the people you're meant to find,
AI and the Personalization of Brand Narrative
Part six of Bill Sparks' series on the evolution of branding. Can a machine tell your brand's story? Bill separates the AI that is quietly making marketing better from the AI that keeps embarrassing the companies that trust it in the open.
Real to Me, Synthetic in the Making
Last week Paul Pfanner argued the barrier to making anything had fallen away. So he wrote and produced an album in a week to test it, and came back with the harder question waiting on the other side: what part of the work, and what part of him, is still real.
You Are Out of Excuses
Paul Pfanner spent a weekend testing whether he believed his own argument. He set out to write and produce a twelve-song blues album with no musical training and no idea how to begin, and finished with more than he planned.
Building Brand Loyalty Through Community
Bill Sparks on why handing your story to your customers is the hardest brand strategy to pull off, and the loyalty it earns that no ad budget can buy.
RACER, I Will Miss You
Paul Pfanner on reading the news posted to X by RACER Editor David Malsher-Lopez, and other news outlets that issue 341 will be the magazine's last in print, and on the people, readers, and advertisers who built it.
Who, or What, is the Media Now?
Paul Pfanner takes apart the word "media" in 2026 and finds a surveillance economy sitting under the pull, then makes the case for the one thing paper can still do that a screen can't.
Independent Creators as Brand Storytellers
Bill Sparks looks at how creator partnerships became a $44 billion channel, and the tradeoff every brand faces: the authenticity that makes a creator worth hiring is the same thing you can't fully control.