Maserati 450S: A Bazooka from Modena
by Walter Bäumer and Jean-François Blachette
Super expensive, hard to handle, engine power that overwhelmed the chassis, sexy Fantuzzi coachwork. Built to suit the upcoming racing regs it became obsolete a few years later when they changed. So few were made you may never see—or hear, a real treat—one.
We Were the Ramchargers: Inside Drag Racing’s Legendary Team, 2nd Ed.
by Dave Rockwell
Passionate auto engineers don’t leave their day jobs behind in their free time but few went as deep into pro motorsports as this bunch of Chrysler engineers. The author, a Ramcharger himself, interviewed more than 40 team members, competitors, and track operators.
Happy Lucky Days – My Life in Racing
by Bob Evans
Racing in the the glory days of F5000, Evans showed plenty of talent but as his entertaining and candid autobiography shows, scoring points and wins has a lot to do with factors outside a driver’s control.
Road Hogs
Detroit’s Big, Beautiful Luxury Performance Cars of the 1960s and 1970s
by Eric Peters
The combination of book title and cover photo—a car so big it spills off the page—is clever! Author Peters refers, rightly, to the big cars of those years as “totems of a different America” and his book as “a funeral dirge.”
Ed Pink, The Old Master
by Ed Pink with Bones Bourcier
There was a time, before crew chiefs, when engine builders were as famous as the star drivers because they saw to every aspect of a car’s performance. Having built thousands of engines, at 92, Pink has finally called it quits.
Flying and Preserving Historic Aircraft, The Memoirs of David Ogilvy
by David Ogilvy
Can’t tell roll from bank? Ever put a fuel-soaked rag into your carb intake to encourage combustion? Ever piloted a 1910 triplane, or the first British jet? Ogilvy’s highly polished prose will transport you into the cockpit.
Baillon Collection
by Rémi Dargegen
Looked at one car at a time, the Baillon Collection is interesting enough but it is the unique circumstances of it being found and brought to market that will forever make it the “find of the century.”
The Race to the Future: The Adventure That Accelerated the Twentieth Century
by Kassia St. Clair
Automobiles, electric lights, wireless telegraphy, the first synthetic plastic—everything is changing all at once. Ironic: The 8000-mile drive in 1907 from Peking to Paris happened at the same time newspapers touted “the triumph of the horse.”
Airway to the East 1918–1920 and the Collapse of No.1 Aerial Route RAF
by Clive Semple
The Arab-Israeli conflict is in the news every day. This book revisits a story related to it but buried since 1919 and deals with early long-distance flying in general.
Made in America, The Industrial Photography of Christopher Payne
by Christopher Payne
You may think the US has outsourced most of its manufacturing but in fact it is the world’s second-largest manufacturer. Still, it ain’t what it used to be, and while output is up, employment is down. But put all that aside and simply look at what’s happening on factory and shop floors.
Honda/Acura NSX: Honda’s Original Supercar
by Brian Long
Conceived as “the everyday supercar” the NSX delivered, often enough besting the higher-priced competition. The press and engineering folk loved it, the buying public not so much.
The Diesel Odyssey of Clessie Cummins
by C. Lyle Cummins Jr.
Cummins is not only the name behind the ubiquitous Cummins Diesel truck engine but also a world speed and endurance record holder. Readers with historical awareness will recognize in the publisher’s name a clever homage to Sadi Carnot, the brilliant young French scientist who is considered the father of thermodynamics.