The geniuses over at Jalopy Journal's forums have set their minds to figuring out why cars look like they're leaning forward in early 1900s racing photos, as in this famous 1913 photo by Jacques-Henri Lartigue. The discussion plots the technical anomalies that make it happen as well as the accidental effect on pop culture—a million cartoon drawings of cars leaning as they race, all because of the distorting effect of a shutter speed accident.

The intrepid Abby Clawson Low, who runs Hi + Low, discovered this vinyl sculpture of a VW bug by artist Margarita Cabrera. Referencing maquiladoro factories, where a company (say, Volkswagen) sends parts to a Mexican outpost to be assembled and exported, the work is more overtly political than Claes Oldenberg's, but still maintains a similar oversize appeal. This isn't the first time a Beetle has inspired art; Chris Burden, the eminent LA artist, in his 1974 piece Trans-fixed, was nailed to the hood of a Beetle for two minutes while the engine revved.

The Mexican-born Cabrera doesn't go in for anything quite that extreme. She shows at the New York gallery Sarah Meltzer, and currently lives in El Paso. Her other vinyl sculptures include a crumpling Hummer, and a bicycle and piano each meeting their end, like they're melting in the sun.

—David Coggins

The New York artist Duncan Hannah has spent his accomplished career painting rich historical scenes marked with desire. His subjects are often cinematic, ranging from Hitchcock starlet Nova Pilbeam to French gangsters to the finely mustached William Powell. He also has a fondness for literary portraits, English schoolboy life, and the odd bit of erotica.

His new exhibition at J. Graham and Sons, the venerable Madison Avenue gallery, is distinguished by paintings of another recurring passion: classic roadsters. The Wolseley is the subject of The Mystery Road, driving across a stone bridge with what seems like suspicious intention. That should come as no surprise, it's the same car that appears in early Hitchcock thrillers like The Thirty Nine Steps. The boxy black car is anonymous with a touch of menace—it looks like there may be an abducted heroine in the back seat. Hannah is a longtime devotee of mid-century British Grand Prix, when drivers raced around pastoral tracks in Vanwalls and Aston Martins. His portraits of racers show cars speeding by alone—there's a private joy of speed, a liberating sense of motion.

Hannah gets inspiration from old English racing magazines that he's subscribed to since he was a boy. For more immediate inspiration he attends the vintage car race in Lime Rock, near his home in Connecticut. Every Labor Day weekend beautiful cars race along the Housatonic River. 'If a landscape needs a protagonist,' he told me, 'what could be better than a Jaguar XKE?'

—David Coggins

Duncan Hannah's works are on view September 7 – October 9, 2007 at James Graham & Sons