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Racing in the Rain, My Years with Brilliant Drivers, Legendary Sports Cars, and a Dedicated Team
by John Horsman

The Art of Racing in the Rain
by Garth Stein

Two books—they couldn’t be more alike in one respect, yet completely different in others. One is a serious historical tome, important in its documentation of a racing period we will never see again. The other is a great beach book. And, of course, they both have the same activity in similar weather in their titles.

Racing in the Rain is John Horsman’s autobiography, his personal, definitive account mainly of his racing career spanning more than two decades. I particularly enjoyed learning of his early activities as a John Wyer apprentice at Aston Martin. This was during the development of the Tadek Marek 3.7-liter engine in the early DB4 days, the first car completely designed by the company under David Brown.

From this start at Aston Martin, Horsman eventually rejoined Wyer, becoming project director of the GT40 program at Ford Advanced Vehicles. Then there is his tenure with the blue-and-orange Gulf-sponsored Ford GT40s, Mirages, and Porsche 917s. All were prepared by Horsman and his team: You may remember…they ran well in the rain.

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Eat Free or Die
by Kevin Clemens

Written by a bona fide, real-life, practicing, authentic, credential-carrying automotive journalist, Eat Free or Die is a wild ride (that was just too easy!) of a novel which I read as a sort of slightly less-complicated, car-centric DaVinci Code. This fast-moving (is that another car reference?), turbocharged whodunit features the adventures of a super hot-shot automotive journo from a super hot-shot automotive magazine.

Author Kevin Clemens alliteratively named his protagonist Simon St. Scot. Said hero, St. Scot, surely has it all. He lives in an old-but-capacious, tastefully-reconditioned former firehouse in the guts of the big city. It is fully equipped with a complete automotive workshop where this word-twister gets his frustrations worked out by skillfully beating out panels of (very) expensive classic (and Classic!) cars. That is, when he’s not flying business class to the best parts of the known world on some lavish press junket to test the latest ZoomMobile 800 at the Nürburgring or Paul Richard. As Clemens takes pains to oft remind us, top motoring journalists like St. Scot are paid sub-slave wages, but the “bennies” (piled high onto smoking Platinum corporate cards) are simply super-spectacular.

Of course, all the cool car stuff suddenly gets sort of secondary when some SOB burns St. Scot’s cool firehouse down, some other guys (maybe the same guys, but they got away) take a couple of potshots at him while missing St. Scot, but hitting possibly the best-looking Detective in the whole NYPD (Miss Linda Jamison). A wild-assed car chase ensues that ends up with the bad guys shooting themselves (and not in the foot, by the way). And that’s only after St. Scot’s former editor apparently commits suicide for no earthly reason.

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Two anthologies of automotive writings by one of the masters.

Ken Purdy was a prolific freelance writer during the 1940s-1970s. He edited magazines directed toward men including True and Argosy, writing authoritatively on many subjects, but is remembered primarily for his car related articles and short stories. It is no accident that the award For Excellence in Automotive Journalism given by the International Motor Press Association is named The Ken Purdy Award.

The Kings of the Road is a very important book in the field of automotive literature, and in my own life as a ‘car guy’. It was one of the few automobile related volumes available at the time, and my copy dates from 1952 when the red Bugatti Atlantic on the dust jacket lured me into parting with five hard earned dollars, a fortune for a ten year old boy. I’ve never regretted that purchase, and must not be alone as the book stayed in print continuously for seventeen years. This landmark volume opened the eyes of postwar Americans to the cars we now call Classics, and likely served as an inspiration to the writers whose works continue to celebrate the automobile.

In the author’s own words: “It is about cars that herald their coming for a mile and break your neck as you try to watch them pass. We will treat, in these pages, of automobiles designed to run for 20 years, and of the men who built them and drove them. We sing here of motorcars beautiful as sunsets, strong as bank vaults, desirable as dark-eyed houris never were, and safe as churches. Let us consider the fabulous Bugatti, prince of motors. Imagine a string-straight, poplar-lined Route Nationale in France on a summer’s day. That growing dot in the middle distance is a sky-blue Bugatti coupé, rasping down from Paris to Nice at 110 miles an hour….”

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1953 BAFTA Award for Best British Film

Genevieve
by Henry Cornelius

Had a rough day at the office? Need to escape from the pressures of modern day life, yet don’t quite feel up to the continuous explosions and pyrotechnics that pass for entertainment in today’s motion pictures? Want to see one of the nicest films about automobiles ever made? Then, I highly recommend the movie Genevieve.

This film, made in 1953 on a super-tight budget, by a 39 year-old director who was also the film’s producer, has old cars, romance, comedy, gentle action, along with sex appeal and charm enough to drain away the day’s tensions—it almost guarantees you’ll be in a good mood after seeing it.

The story is simple: two couples are entered in the annual London to Brighton Rally, which (for those unfamiliar with it) is for cars built before 1905. Alan McKim (played by John Gregson) is a lawyer (barrister in the UK) whose wife Wendy (played by Dinah Sheridan) is growing tired of going on the event each year. She’s also unhappy about the time that McKim lavishes on his automobile, the 1904 Darracq named Genevieve.

Meanwhile, the wonderfully named Ambrose Claverhouse (played by Kenneth More), who is an advertising executive and something of a playboy, boasts about the reliability and performance of his 1904 Spyker. Claverhouse shows up at the starting line each year with a different female companion—invariably young, glamorous, and beautiful. This year he arrives with fashion model Rosalind Peters (played by Kay Kendall, whose career as an actress was beginning to wane before she took the role in Genevieve). Kendall plays the role of a pampered and spoiled diva to perfection.

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The Scarlet Car
by Richard Harding Davis

You know about, have perhaps even read, The Scarlet Letter. Also, perhaps, the play-turned-novel that took the world by storm, The Scarlet Pimpernel. But how about The Scarlet Car? This slim book first published in 1907 is certainly among the very earliest motoring stories.

Ironically The Scarlet Car has more in common with the other two “scarlets” than just the color word in the title. All three stories, with the oldest being Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter which he wrote and published in 1850, revolve around a strong, independent-thinking central female character. But, of course, only one features the automobile as a main focus—and this scarlet vehicle occupying no less prominent a position than the title role.

The readability of the book is no surprise when one learns of Richard Harding Davis’ background, education, profession and experiences. Davis’ life is described with terms like flamboyant and swashbuckling. He was a reporter from the front during the Greco-Turkish, Boer, and Spanish-American wars. During the latter he was present when Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders stormed San Juan Hill and, of course, told the story as he’d witnessed it in print. As an editor for Harper’s Weekly, a contributor to Vanity Fair, plus corresponding newspaper reporter, he had the forums. Additionally he expressed his creativity authoring short stories, full-length books, and stage plays.

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