Back in the early post-war decades America made some cracking cars. This was one of them, the beautiful Oldsmobile ’88’ Rocket Coupe. This great recreation of the classic V8 is the work of Flickr’s Peter Blackert, making his second recent appearance here.

The ’88’ Rocket became one of the cult cars of the 1950s, and was probably the peak of Oldsmobile’s cool. By the late 1970s though, the U.S auto industry was struggling to make anything cool at all, and in 2004 General Motors folded the troubled brand. We have cars like this one to thank for that. Still, whatever has become of the Oldsmobile company, the Rocket will always remind us of a time when to drive American was a very good thing indeed.