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Alfa Romeo: From 1910 to 2010
by Maurizio Tabucchi

“When I see an Alfa Romeo, I tip my hat!”

                                    —Henry Ford, 1939
  (long thought an apocryphal—and unlikely—remark but 
  confirmed in 1988 by Dr. Ing. Pierugo Gobbato in an 
 interview with Griffith Borgeson as having been made 
          to Gobatto Sr. during a visit to Dearborn.)

Alfa Romeo or A.L.F.A.—Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili which translates into Lombard Automobile Factory, Public Company—or simply Alfa is in the enviable position of celebrating 100 years of operations, 1910–2010. All sorts of books will laud the centenary, and Italian publisher Giorgio Nada of Milan, Alfa’s hometown, has produced two. One is a €500, 200 page limited edition of 1998 copies (Alfa Romeo. The Official Book - Centenary Edition) by various authors and then this much more affordable tome.

The book covers in chronological order the ups and downs of the firm; the emphasis is on the product but there is useful if not extensive reference to the overall political and economic situation and ancillary topics of technical relevance such as aviation.

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Legendary Corvettes:
‘Vettes Made Famous on Track and Screen
by Randy Leffingwell

“Every Corvette is special. But these are legendary.”

Only a handful of GM model names have lived longer—the Suburban (1935) and De Ville (1949) come to mind. And while the Corvette’s closest original competitor, the Ford Thunderbird (1955) has had a checkered and nonlinear history and even was retired several times, readers with a long memory will of course recall that if it hadn’t been for that very Thunderbird, an overnight runaway success for Ford, GM would have loved nothing better than to pull the plug on its unloved, underpowered, anemic, torpid two-speed erstwhile Motorama dream car. Instead, fearing a loss of face, GM stirred itself into action—the Corvette crossed the million-car threshold way back in 1993 and, with few exceptions, each new iteration adds to the luster of the name. The model not only remains the iconic American sports car but continues to improve (well, the seats of even the most current Corvettes are a long way from being as good as those in other cars) and it IS one of the great cars of the world.

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Dictionary of World Coachbuilders and Car Stylists
by Marián Suman-Hreblay

Originally published as a book but now only available in CD ROM form, this impressive reference work lists all of the well known—and numerous not-so-well known—car coachbuilders and stylists in the world. The 3174 car coachbuilding companies and design centers, and 1161 car stylists and related personalities from the end of the 19th century to the present that the book covered are increased on the CD to 4000 and 1550 respectively. Who knew there are this many!? “Car” is here meant to refer to companies that use[d] passenger car chassis, or in some later cases platforms, for their bodywork creations, some of which were not necessarily designed for passenger transportation. Suman-Hreblay is a member of the Society of Automotive Historians and a widely published automotive writer who lives in Slovakia. This book is similar in concept to his 2000 compendium Automobile Manufacturers Worldwide Registry. Both these works are eminently useful reference sources even if one can’t very well say that they make bedtime, or cover-to-cover reading.

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Porsche Racing Cars: 1953 to 1975
by Brian Long

This book looks at Porsche’s purpose-built competition cars of the modern era, cars the author considers motorsports and design icons “the likes of which, sadly, we will never see again.” Marque expert Brian Long is a trained engineer with some 40 motoring books on his resume, quite a number of which have a place in the core canon of Porsche literature. He also has strong links to the factory which itself has a commendable commitment to preserving its proud history in the form of a professionally managed archive and museum. Long says he had wanted to do this book (and its companion, Porsche Racing Cars: 1976 to 2005, ISBN-13: 978-1904788454) for decades so one wonders what he thought when Anthony Pritchard published his very similar book just a bit earlier. Remarkably, even though both authors cover pretty much the same era and the same cars, of the almost 1000 photos they show combined only a handful are common to both books! Hats off to the photo researchers and the Porsche Archive for making the effort to facilitate distinctively different books, each worthy in its own right.

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Lotus Esprit, The Official Story
by Jeremy Walton

“Created and marketed against all the financial odds because of massive personal commitment from staff whose loyalty was frequently overstressed on less than generous pay, the Esprit had a particularly good human story to tell.”

The Lotus Esprit may have held a record among British sports cars for continuous production—28 years and almost 11,000 copies sold—but pick up an automotive encyclopedia today and you’ll find that this Lotus hardly warrants a footnote. And—except for a very few low-number, special models—don’t even look at a classic car price guide . . .

Originally intended to be named “Kiwi” (which would not only have been plain weird but also broken Lotus’ tradition of starting road car names with the letter “E”) the Esprit was among designer Giorgetto Giugiaro’s first experiments with polygonal “origami” designs—it looked sharp figuratively and literally. Its handling, too, was sharp but the power anemic and after only a few years a long, long string of improvements began that would lead to some 25 distinct models between 1976 and 2004.

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