Meet Our Reviewers

Sabu Advani has been a voracious reader for as long as he can remember. Having his first article accepted by a magazine at the ripe old age of 12 gave Sabu a taste for rubbing words together himself. As they happened, his various professional activities seemed random and arbitrary but in hindsight a common denominator is manifest: consuming words, creating words to build the house of knowledge. From reader to writer to educator, to bookbinder and papermaker, to bookstore owner to a professional life in publishing, Sabu’s life revolves around books. His automotive and aviation interests are wide-ranging too, with perhaps a bit more emphasis on British and European. Good thing too as he has been Editor in Chief of The Flying Lady, the Rolls-Royce Owners’ Club‘s award-winning magazine, since 1998.
Bill Ingalls has both literary and mechanical interests. A steady reader, this fourth-generation Napa Valley Californian was raised in Hercules, a small bayside factory town that made dynamite. He received his degree in History from the University of Colorado, where he was business manager of the Colorado Daily. He owned a typesetting business that produced books and newspapers before becoming a newspaper editor himself. He is currently a playwright, producer of ‘radio-movies’ for public radio KCBX, and owner of a radio drama production studio. As a 1950s kid he drove a restored 1927 Chrysler Roadster and helped build racing boats and drag-racing cars. He owned and sold a series of specialized automotive parts manufacturing companies, founded on his patents. He currently designs parts for the automotive aftermarket, and has a “small but sincere” vehicle-related book collection. He is an SAE and RROC member, presented a paper on his variable valve timing design at the SAE World Congress, and was editor of the award-winning Colorado SAE Section Newsletter.

 

André Blaize was introduced to a couple of 1910 Silver Ghosts at the age of 14 and since then he has been a keen Rolls-Royce enthusiast. After graduating from Caen University (France) he went to Cambridge (UK) to prepare a Master’s Degree in 1969–1970. At that time he had already started building up his massive Rolls-Royce database which contains all the coachbuilt chassis and their histories as complete as possible. He contributed to a number of R-R books and published the French edition of Rolls-Royce: From the Dawn of the 20th Century into the New Millennium with German photographer/author Klaus-Josef Roßfeldt in 1998. He is a contributing editor to The Flying Lady and a number of other magazines. He drives and maintains himself a 1937 Rolls-Royce because he thinks half of the pleasure lies under the bonnet and under the car!
Paul Kenny was raised in Cheshire, in the northwest of England, on a meaty diet of Denis Jenkinson in Motor Sport and Eoin Young in Autocar. His biography of Amherst Villiers, The Man Who Supercharged Bond, was called “one of, if not the, best automobile books of the year” on Jay Leno’s Book Club, and was nominated one of the top 10 car books of 2010 by autoblog.com. Paul has given talks on the subject to the American Bugatti Club the Rolls-Royce Owners’ Club, as well as the First International Blower Bentley Rally in Germany.
Bill Wolf began, like many who came before and after, his interest in automobiles sketching customs and hot rods on the margins of his elementary school notebooks. As a young teenager, he built—unfortunately with a rather quick and unsteady hand—1/24 scale models of American classics, customizing and hot-rodding them according to whim. Some early fond memories include racing go-carts on a track with esses and a hairpin, being taken for a quickly accelerating, very fast ride in a brand-new 409 Chevrolet and attending the drag races at York, Pennsylvania. His first job was a counterman in a VW dealership, and his last automotive position was as warranty manager for a Saab, Jaguar, Bentley and Rolls-Royce dealership. He edited on the regional and contributes on the national level to car club publications. His focus is on the Rolls-Royce and Bentley marques, but the lore of hot rods and classic American iron still holds an appeal. Bill has a master’s degree in Literature, taught High School English, is quite happily married and resides in New Jersey.
Kevin Clemens, engineer, journalist, author, and adventurer, has driven north of the Arctic Circle in the dead of winter, across the searing deserts of China in the heat of summer, through the perils of the republics of the former Soviet Union, over treacherous roads in the Andes Mountains, in fifty-four countries and fifty states. He is a magazine editor, publisher (Demontreville Press), the author of several books, a member of the Society of Automotive Historians, and holder of a Land Speed Record.
Frank Barrett has read and collected automotive books since he was six years old, and they have formed a major part of his life. Frank edited and published The Star, the award-winning national magazine of the Mercedes-Benz Club of America for 25 years. His writing and photography have also appeared in numerous publications and he’s authored two books. Frank has run Toad Hall Motorbooks, selling new and old books on Porsche and Mercedes-Benz since 1978 and he’s a longtime member of the Society of Automotive Historians.