Archive for Items Categorized 'Automobiles', only excerpts shown, click title for full entry.

Lost Muscle Car Dealerships

by Duncan S. Brown

A complete list of dealerships that once specced their own souped-up cars or sponsored customers’ race cars, if it were even possible to compile one, would number more than the 17 presented here. This book also includes Canadian ones.

The Car: The Rise and Fall of the Machine that Made the Modern World 

by Bryan Appleyard

The car is dead. Long live the car. A new era is almost here and the days of the current one are definitely numbered. The modern world is unimaginable without the car, so let’s take a look at how it all played out.

Around the World in a Napier – the Story of Two Motoring Pioneers

by Andrew M. Jepson

Around the world in 80 days?? Nah. Make that six years—and 46,528 miles, and 39 countries. They literally went were no one had been before. And you can follow them here.

Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance

Celebrating 70 Years of Automotive Excellence

It started in 1950 with thirty cars of which five belonged to one guy. And then it grew—how and why is what this book is about. Today a PBC trophy is a bucket list item, heck, even just attending as a spectator is.

Astonishing Stories Pilots Tell

by Robert N. Pripps

You’ve heard it: flying is hours and hours of absolute boredom interspersed by moments of sheer panic. The author has written three dozen books about farm tractors but his heart has always been in the clouds. He earned his pilot’s license half a century ago—plenty long to have picked up a few tales.

Freestone & Webb, 1923–1958

by James Taylor

“Top Hat” and “Razor Edge” were just some of the clever ideas this coachbuilder had up their sleeve, they won gold medals nine years in a row, and were among the last five big remaining firms. But bespoke coachwork went the way of the dodo bird and it is little consolidation that F&W went out in a blaze of glory.

Concept Cars of the 1960s: Yesterday’s Future

by Richard Heseltine

Heseltine’s premise is that the 1960s were prime time for the concept car, and gives ample evidence of it. The future then posed different questions than it does today so the 200 cars discussed here cover the whole spectrum from of-the-moment practicality to science fiction.

Detroit Steel Artists

by Matthew Kilkenny

Ray Dietrich probably designed more custom and semi-custom cars than any other designer of the Classic Car Era. This is the book about Dietrich and others and those cars.

Adventures in Ferrari Land

by Edwin K. Niles

Was there really a time when used Ferraris were (relatively) cheap enough that even young people could afford them, use them as daily drivers, even race them without qualms? Yes! And Niles was the enabler—thanks to him so many Ferraris found their way to SoCal that they were easier to find there than in Italy.

Cobra Jet: The History of Ford’s Greatest High-Performance Muscle Cars

by Rob Kinnan & Diego Rosenberg

From its launch in 1968 to right now, Ford’s Cobra Jet has moved the needle and so does this fine book that separates the wheat from the chaff in a story that has been told too often for its own good.

Legends & Lore Along California’s Highway 395

by Brian Clune

Have a need to visit  a house shaped like a lemon? Or, more sobering, the Manzanar Internment Camp? Or check if there really are 80,000 hubcaps in the hubcap capital of the world? Heck, that stop counts as a twofer because the 25-ft-tall woman lives here too. Go West, young wo/man!

Internal Fire, The Internal Combustion Engine 1673–1900

by C. Lyle Cummins, Jr.

Follow the history of the internal-combustion engine from as far back as the 1600s to sideshows such as the use of gunpowder as a motive force to its ca. 1900—and still absurdly inefficient—iteration.

Newer Entries »
« Older Entries