Vintage Motorcycle Crash Helmet with goggles. Helmet made by P.M.

Vintage Motorcycle Crash Helmet with goggles. Helmet made by P.M. 1950s maybe Italian or English.

Old racing helmets are living graphics from a bygone era. Racing cars and bikes get repainted and reupholstered many times in their life, but when a helmet would get outdated it was usually shelved for the next newer model. This is why you can still find some nicely preserved ones if you look around a bit. Crash helmets go all the way back to the earliest days of auto and motorbike racing, first in cloth (from aviation), then leather (often from football), and finally the composite models came along in 1950s. This is when the helmet could serve not only as real protection, but also as a sort of racing number plate or driver identifier. Here’s a sampling of 50s era helmets that feel authentic and right in the hot rod wheelhouse.