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Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird
by Steve Pace

Being able to travel at an altitude of 16 miles and cover 33 miles a minute is an unmatched achievement for a manned airplane even today, some 50 years after someone first dreamt up the Blackbird. Among its many records is the faster-ever New York London time (1974): 1:54:56 hrs which translates to 1806.96 mph!

This is an introductory text and for the benefit of the reader new to the subject, and therefore the most likely to be interested in this book, we ought to provide a few introductory remarks. Many books on the Blackbirds have been published since the 1980s and they don’t all agree on the details. Partly this is due to different approaches to research and scholarship but mostly the discrepancies stem from more and more material becoming declassified over time. The Blackbirds were a super-secret program, in fact, the first planes (single-seaters with civilian pilots) were strictly for the CIA.

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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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The Book of Air Shows
by Philip Handleman

“There is no more fitting a place than an air show or fly-in for the knowledgeable technicians to pass on a taste of their trade to young, impressionable visitors.”

The above quote is an excerpt from the caption of the last photo in this book. And inspiring the young generation—not just in terms of technical matters but also in terms of history and the aircraft community with its camaraderie and lifestyle—is certainly a reason for Handleman to write a book like this. He is a long-time private pilot and photographer/filmmaker and both these qualities neatly come together here. You may recognize his name from the over 20 aerospace-related books he has written/edited, or from several PBS documentaries—or the 1997 US postage stamp commemorating the 50th anniversary of the US Air Force that featured his photo of a Thunderbird formation in flight (philatelists: this happens to be the first US stamp to use the Scrambled Indicia security device).

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Lockheed Blackbird: Beyond the Secret Missions
by Paul F Crickmore

In automotive terms the Blackbird is a veritable hot rod, doubling, almost trebling the altitude and flight envelopes of the best fighters of its day, such as the F-100 Super Sabre and F-101 Voodoo. To achieve such lofty performance most of its systems and materials had to be invented or created from scratch, such as the first-ever large-scale use of titanium (advanced composites didn’t exist yet) or its aluminum-impregnated tires or a brand-new type of fuel.

All of Crickwood’s several Blackbird books have met with high acclaim, not least from the Habus themselves (the nickname for the crews that flew operational sorties and also for the plane itself)—and they should know better than anyone what’s what.

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Silver Arrows In Camera:
A Photographic History of the Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union Racing Teams 1934–39
by Anthony Pritchard

This book delivers more than its subtitle promises! If the word “photographic” were missing from the title, no one would feel short-changed by the contents. Not only is this book an excellent source of period photography, it also contains a thorough textual treatment in the form of extensive photo captions as well as contextual narrative. That said, the book does keep a narrow focus on the car-specific aspects of the story, which, considering that the history of Germany’s Auto Union and Mercedes-Benz Silver Arrow cars of that era is utterly inseparable from the political context of the time, is a useful qualifier to keep in mind. Put another way, the story of Nazi Germany, Hitler’s fascination with cars in general and motorsport in particular, state subsidies, the propaganda value of victorious racing efforts, political pressure exerted on manufacturers, or cronyism are referenced where they materially affect the competition history of the cars but the book neither dwells on these matters nor attempts to unravel the many, often unholy, alliances. And it certainly isn’t in its purview to pass judgment.

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Stanguellini
by Luigi Orsini and Franco Zagari

Automobili Stanguellini was a maker of small racing and road cars in Modena, Italy. Modena, of course, is known as the home of Ferrari and Maserati but did you realize that they and Stanguellini had their premises all within the same square mile? Stanguellini, in fact, is older than the others but while the bookshelves are bending under the weight of books about the big-name Italian makes, Stanguellini literature is as sparse as the cars themselves. Of the several, smaller Italian firms collectively known as Etceterinis, its name is probably better known than others to Americans because of their successful Formula Junior cars 1958 to 1963.

The author team of Orsini and Zagari, who each, separately and together, have already contributed significantly to the Italian-car literature are here presenting a thorough survey of the generations of Stanguellinis and their machines. For English-speakers, in fact, this is about the only thorough book on the subject to date.

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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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André Lefebvre and the Cars He Created for Voisin and Citroën

by Gijsbert-Paul Berk


I admit to being heretofore unaware of the importance of André Lefebvre (1894–1964). There are two reasons I knew so little about this brilliant and accomplished French engineer. According to the author the first is that engineers, particularly in France, work more or less incognito. The second is that in 1958, Lefebvre suffered a stroke which prevented him from writing his memoirs. And he wasn’t one for self promotion anyway. For an American audience there is surely a third: few people today are cognizant of any type of French car let alone the people behind them.

Berk has gone to considerable lengths to bring us Lefebvre’s very interesting story. In addition to his work at Voisin, Lefebvre was in large part responsible for the Citroën Traction Avant, the H series trucks and vans, the 2CV and the DS—to have been responsible for just one of these cars would be worthy of nomination to the Engineering Hall of Fame! (Berk refrains from hero worship and gives plenty of credit and ink to the many engineers and managers who were as instrumental as Lefebvre.)

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Bluebird CN7
The Inside Story of Donald Campbell’s Last Land Speed Record Car

by Donald Stevens

This book tells the story of a pair of brothers, Ken and Lew Norris, who designed and built Britain’s Bluebird CN7 with a mind to break the world’s land speed record. In the hands of Donald Campbell (hence the name of the vehicle: C for Campbell, N for Norris), the greatest-ever LSR holder, this gas turbine-powered car established itself as the fastest wheel-driven vehicle on earth until 1965 and even then was only bested by 6 mph (Summers brothers). The challenges of producing a car capable of achieving speeds of more than 500 mph were substantial, requiring a chassis, gearboxes, and drive shafts that could withstand the enormous torque stresses produced by its 4100 hp gas turbine. And all this happened 50 years ago! Imagine if CN8 had ever been built—a supersonic car capable of a theoretical 852 mph!

Author Don Stevens was a young engineer when he became the Norris Brothers’ first employee in 1958 where he first worked on the jet-powered Bluebird K7 hydrofoil and later became project coordinator on the Bluebird CN7 car.

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Fast Food: Roadside Restaurants in the Automobile Age
by John A Jakle, Keith A Sculle

“For others the roadside is just too damn obvious to require rigorous contemplation.”

This quote, from the last page of the book (first published in 1999), probably should have been on the first. The whole concept of “the roadside” as an entity in and of itself, let alone as a topic deserving of serious thought, still seems to be outside of the field of view of the general motoring public. This despite a body of literature that dates back to the 1960s. Books like this and events like the 1988 Society for Commercial Archeology conference “Americans and the Automobile” seek to give visibility to the complex and often hidden influences of the automobile on culture and everyday life.

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Legendary Race Cars
by Basem Wasef

McLaren, Lotus, Maserati, Ferrari—simply saying the names of the world’s great racecar makers is thrilling to their fans. The words sound fantastic on their own; still powerful even after all the years they’ve been household words. That’s because the names bring with them remembered images and sounds of the fastest and most exotic automobiles mankind has ever made.

In the same vein as his 2007 book Legendary Motorcycles, Basem Wasef has put together a stunning photo book covering the top cars from the first century of automobile racing. Cars as varied as the 1911 Marmon Wasp that won the very first Indianapolis 500 and Colin McRae’s 555 Subaru Impreza are extensively profiled, along with the men and women who drove them.

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Equations of Motion
Adventure, Risk and Innovation
by William F Milliken

You’ve heard the saying about someone having “forgotten more than the rest of us will ever know.” This certainly applies to Bill Milliken (b. 1911), except that he hasn’t forgotten anything! He was 95 years old when he published the first version of this autobiography, the hardcover edition, and 97 when he published the expanded softcover edition. And he was still sharp as a tack at the 99th birthday bash thrown for him in April 2010 by the International Motor Racing Research Center at Watkins Glen—which has a corner named after him where he rolled his Type 35A Bugatti in a section of the original circuit during the inaugural race in 1948. He is still involved as an occasional consultant in his company, Milliken Research Associates (MRA), now headed by his son Doug.

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Flying Freestyle: An RAF Fast Jet Pilot’s Story
by Jerry Pook

This is a book for real flying enthusiasts. Jerry Pook has that ability as a writer to describe his remarkable flying experiences in a dramatic way that puts you in the cockpit with him during his many varied missions. Air Vice-Marshall Ron Elder calls Pook in his Foreword “one of life’s natural rebels.” Clearly a natural and very able pilot, he had made it quite clear that, although a Royal Air Force College graduate with a real chance of reaching the senior ranks, his only desire was to fly. As a result he was able to fly continuously for more than a quarter of a century with no interruption of a ground tour, an extraordinary achievement, particularly for a Cranwell graduate who was expected to fly his share of desks.

But his excellent flying ability was his undoing, being selected for instructor training upon completion of his training instead of getting to strap on one of his dream aeroplanes, the Hunter.

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