It all began many, many years ago when God commanded Noah to build an ark to save his wife, his sons, his sons' wives, and all animals from perishing in the Flood. Truly, Noah crafted one of the world's most iconic vehicles – or, rather, vessels – when he acted upon God's commandment.
Vehicles of all kinds have been integral to Earth's history. Consider the mythical Trojan Horse – a wheeled equine the Greeks used to secretly enter the city of Troy and win the Trojan War. Or, the chariot racing feats of Caligula, who even as Roman Emperor engaged in and obsessed over an oval-tracked sport held in higher regard by the lower classes. He could indeed be considered a pioneer of the NASCAR of his time.
Leonardo da Vinci was truly a vehicular innovator during the Rennaisance, not only pioneering armoured vehicles with his 360-degree 'tank' design, but also designing early flying machines centuries before the Wright brothers cracked the code for enabling manned flight in the world's first successful aeroplane.
However, some of da Vinci's designs even anticipated Isaac Newton's laws of motion established in the 17th century Scientific Revolution. Of course, this science is fundamental to how cars are designed today, with physics enabling engineers to design cars that drive faster and handle better year after year.
It took until 1885, though, for the first thing we can reasonably call a car to be designed, when Karl Benz premiered the Benz Patent-Motorwagen. Although, just looking at it again, can you really call it a car? Eh, close enough.
In the years after this, Nikola Tesla developed an induction motor that operated on alternating current. His pioneering work with electricity has surely impacted the long-term development of the electric vehicles we see emerging today, for which the now-social media baron Elon Musk named an entire car company in his honour.
What do these pioneering figures and their tales have to do with this website and its founders, Noah Charalambous and Patrick Jackson? Pretty much nothing, to be quite honest. Neither of them are engineers or inventors – they just drive cars that were downstream creations of these famous feats, and then write about them on the internet.
Were it not for Ark & Sons offering a new, yet historically-informed take on automotive content, that would be a bit tragic by comparison. Bathed in legend and forged over centuries, this motoring title has years of history behind it. Other people's largely unrelated history, sure, but history nonetheless.
On the contrary, what you might also be seeing is history in the making. Time travellers: tell us if we're right.
Okay, but seriously, what's this all about?
Launched in 2024, Ark & Sons is a pioneering website built by and for the car enthusiasts of today. Blending travel, wit, community, and a love of spirited drives, this isn't just another car review website, but instead a way of looking at motoring as a whole in a different light.
This is a website that puts you in the driver's seat – not just by letting you in on unique adventures in special cars, but by giving you an opportunity to interact with our editorial team and help us create the content that you want to see.
Life is too short to drive boring. You know it, and so do we. This is the fix. This is car content done differently.