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

Discovered: The Nineteenth Rolls-Royce Phantom IV

by Bill Wolf

Spoiler alert: there really are only eighteen, and only available (when new) to royalty which is why everything there is to know about them is known. But, asketh the fiction writer, What If?

Quest for Speed: The Epic Saga of Record-Breaking on Land

by Barry John

Ever watch a car break the sound barrier? If it’s a blur to look at, imagine what it looks like from inside the cockpit! When Chuck Yeager had done it in the air half a century before, he too was rattled. This book covers highlights of the 100-year LSR history.

Life on the Wilds Side! My Half Century-Plus As A Professional Racing Driver

by Mike Wilds

A teenage job in the 1960s washing cars at a British shop that built Formula Juniors out back. Thus is born a racer who not only went pro but kept at it for half a century, contesting various series. It’s about time he finally told his story.

Lamborghini – The Man Behind the Legend

written and directed by Robert Moresco

A terrible movie—don’t get your hopes up. We review it because, well, it was a slow day on the ranch.

Ed Pink, The Old Master

by Ed Pink with Bones Bourcier

There was a time, before crew chiefs, when engine builders were as famous as the star drivers because they saw to every aspect of a car’s performance. Having built thousands of engines, at 92, Pink finally called it quits and finished his biography instead.

Automotive Trade Journal

Its purpose is in the name: a magazine to the auto trade covering news and topics such as manufacture, maintenance, and sales. 1931 is a pivotal year as Germany’s economy collapsed that summer and the Great Depression is becoming entrenched.

Origin of the Checker Flag: A Search for Racing’s Holy Grail

by Fred R. Egloff

Ask ten people were the checkered flag used in racing comes from and you’ll get eleven answers. Get the straight dope here.

Leo Villa’s Bluebird Album, with 3D Images

by David de Lara with Kevin Desmond

The Leo Villa of the title spent almost his entire working life with the Campbell family of speed freaks, first Sir Malcolm Campbell and then his son Donald who between them held 21 land and water world speed records.

William Howard Taft and the First Motoring Presidency, 1909–1913

by Michael L. Bromley

Impressively documented re-appraisal of oft-maligned president, with special emphasis on autos. At an important early stage, Taft, in the face of opposition, articulated a national interest in the auto industry and the social advances of widespread motorization.

Lee Noble, Supercar Genius

by Christopher Catto

Noble Automotive started out building kit cars and did it so well that soon enough customers asked for complete cars. Of the many models over the decades are some that moved the needle so decisively that established automakers had to do some hard thinking. This is the first book to tell the full story.

HOTOL: Britain’s Spaceplane

by Dan Sharp

It’s the 1980s and the concept of a reusable winged launch vehicle is (once more?) top of mind in the space industry. HOTOL considered new solutions to old problems, problems that are still not solved today. In Earth’s atmosphere you need jet propulsion, which requires air, which does not exist in space. Now what?