The desire to start crankandpiston.com came about through a personal quest to highlight the automotive culture that is heavily engrained behind the scenes in the UAE and around the region and the photography that underpins it. As well all know, there is an inordinate amount going on in this region and we are becoming more and more relavant on the global level. Hopefully we can go some way to bringing to the attention of our users and their connections the underground scene in and around the region and capture it with pictures and movies.

We also decided early on that we would occasionaly stretch further afield into the Hot Rod scene in Austrlia and car scenes in the US, UK and Europe without being too obvious.

We have a great collection of contributors from local photographers and writers (CAR Middle East, EVO, Wheels etc) to the likes of Luke Ray (www.fuelzine.com) who works for Acclaim, Hot Rod Magazine Australia, Fuel Magazine, Street Machine etc and James Lipman (www.jameslipman.com) who is a contributing photographer to the likes of Autocar, CAR, EVO, Top Gear, Drivers Republic and most automotive manufactueres around the world.

I hope you enjoy the site and if you feel your contibutions would enhance our site then please feel free to contact me on crankandpiston@me.com.

The Team