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International Automotive Media Award: Best Book of 2009

Mark Donohue: Technical Excellence at Speed
by Michael Argetsinger

This biography consists of two books, this 344-page text version with only 40 photos and a second volume, Mark Donohue: His Life in Photographs consisting of several hundred photographs with relevant captions. Argetsinger has written a remarkable and fitting tribute to one of America’s greatest race drivers. That it has already won several awards including the prestigious International Automotive Media Award is no surprise; Argetsinger’s previous work, Walt Hansgen: His Life and the History of Post War American Road Racing was similarly praised and feted in 2006.

This is a significant book fully worthy of the IAMAs. In a full-time effort that required more than three years to complete, Argetsinger interviewed over 211 people close to the subject, and enjoyed not only access to all the family papers but those of the Penske organization as well. He also had access to the unpublished tapes made for Donohue’s own book The Unfair Advantage.

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2007 Motor Presse Club’s Motor Book of the Year

Hitler’s Motor Racing Battles:
The Silver Arrows under the Swastika
by Eberhard Reuss

“Let us correct the myths and perforce scratch the gloss of the racing legends. For beneath the silver that outshines everything there is a kind of brown stain, which can be attributed not to rust, but to suppressed history.”

Ever since producing a 1999 documentary on this subject for German television the author perceived a vacuum in the literature about the famous Auto Union and Mercedes-Benz Silver Arrows of the pre-World War Two period. Lots of books examine the cars and drivers, and while all provide some basic commentary about the political situation in Germany, none fully exhaust the subject of the “direct involvement of the Nazi regime in financing the teams and using them as naked propaganda.”

To this day, so many decades after the war, the subject of Nazism and the Third Reich remain—and understandably so—a particular German preoccupation both on the individual and the collective level.

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La Carrosserie Française
du Style au Design
by Serge Bellu

(French) Right from the cover photo the book leaves no doubt that French cars look, well, different. This distinction—and it is a distinction—is as true today as it was at the very beginning of the automobile era. (Not only that, you wouldn’t have to look far, especially among European commentators, to find the strong sentiment that only the French know how to build true luxury cars.)

Profusely illustrated, this book is the first-ever chronological survey of French design, covering every decade and even including concept cars up to 2007.

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1986 Nicholas-Joseph Cugnot Award Winner

The Marmon Heritage
by George Philip & Stacey Pankiw Hanley

This is the best of books. This is the worst of books. First, the “best” part: The authors detail the leadership and product evolution of the Nordyke & Marmon Company from 1851. This gives a rare inside look at how a top-200 American company morphs from 1851 global flour mill equipment business to 1902–1933 premier US auto manufacturer to important World War Two military-industrial complex member, then back into civilian transportation with trucks and busses, mining equipment, rail cars, all the while adroitly changing with the times until today the company is privately held and renamed Marmon Group (130 global business units, owned by Berkshire Hathaway of Warren Buffett fame). In short, Marmon started big, and still is.

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2008 International Automotive Media Conference: Bronze Medal

Spyders & Silhouettes:
The World Manufacturers and Sports Car Championships in Photographs, 1972–1981
by János Wimpffen

A reader who went straight for the photos would be forgiven—they are the predominant feature of this and Wimpffen’s other three oversize and heavy books in this monumental series of photographic histories of the world sports car championships. There are many other, and cheaper, photo books covering this period but it is the text that distinguishes his. The 25-page Introduction is absolutely first-rate in successfully sorting out this period’s various Groups and Classes and also Series. The former are by no means an easy topic to keep straight and even the latter is beset with anomalies as to which race in which year did or did not count towards world championship points. In fact, the reader who already has a passing acquaintance with the subject and thinks he’s a step ahead is probably the one to benefit the most from reading it because, in this case, knowing a little is worse than not knowing anything. The Group 5 nomenclature is especially confusing because it existed already in the preceding decade but with totally different specs. Anyhow . . .

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