May I See Your ID?

Taking photos with your cool ride goes back to the invention of cool rides, but it takes an expert to figure out what's in the picture.

- ELANA SCHERR

"Do not tell people I'm an expert," says David Burge. "I'm just a reasonably okay amateur when it comes to identifying cars. Okay. Burge is not an expert, but he's awfully good at figuring out the make and model of an automobile from just the smallest corner of a bumper. "A 25 Hudson," he'll declare on a blurry snapshot showing an embossed curve of the fender and a single open door. "It's the suicide door," he explains later, "a rarity in the "20s."

Those "reasonably okay" car ID skills have made Burge a bit of a celebrity in a certain nerdy corner of the internet. Every weekend, as @iowahawkblog on Twitter, he takes on the task of naming the manufacturers and years of cars in photos submitted to him from all over the world. Sometimes they are old advertisements or newspaper archive shots, but the majority are family photos-polyester-clad toddlers on a 73 Road Runner, a fur-draped flapper on the bumper of a '29 Pierce-Arrow, and, of course, lots and lots of Ford Model Ts.