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

The Argentine Temporada Motor Races 1950 to 1960

by Hernan Lopez Laiseca

Fabulous photos, many new to the record, document a formative—and very dangerous—period in a corner of the world in which few people had a driver’s license but were all mad for racing.

DKW: The Complete History of a World Marque

by Siegfried Rauch with Frank Rönicke

DKW pioneered two-stroke engines and front wheel drive. It did not exactly give them world dominion, and the lights have been out since 1966, but the firm’s ideas and influences reach far and wide.

The Kellner Affair: Matters of Life and Death

by Larsen and Erickson

The raison d’être for this book is that French coachbuilder J.P. Kellner was executed by the Nazis as a spy, a victim, as were others, of denunciation. This monumental book examines original documents, all reproduced here—and concludes/proves that the guy blamed for it is not the guy! Oh, and there are cars too . . .

Rolls-Royce

by James Taylor

Fine things come in small packages—a cliché, but, written by a proper researcher and author, this small booklet is a fine introduction to an extraordinarily long-lived marque.

Built to Better the Best: The Kaiser-Frazer Corporation History

by Jack Mueller

Cars pretty much sold themselves in the years following WWII. K-F, the new kid on the block, had the ideas, the product, the manufacturing capability, motivated workers, government loans—and still failed. This book takes a stab at laying out the complex reasons why.

Hurst Equipped: More Than 50 Years of High Performance

by Mark Fletcher & Richard Truesdell

Don’t pass this book by just because it has muscle cars on the cover! Hurst was so much more than performance parts and racecars. This is the first-ever look at the company and its many products and, at least a little bit, the man himself.

Brunei’s Bespoke Rolls-Royce and Bentleys

by Richard Vaughan

In the days of yore, it was the Indian potentates who counted among their playthings fabulously exotic, usually custom-made cars. In the 1990s the richest man in the world was said to be the Sultan of oil-rich Brunei and he too lives large. Little is known of his vast car collection so this book definitely opens new territory.

Roadside Relics: America’s Abandoned Automobiles

by Will Shiers

This look at scrapped American cars lain to rest in field and stream (yes, literally) not only documents relics of yesteryear but also a phenomenon that won’t exist much longer.

GM’s Motorama: The Glamorous Show Cars of a Cultural Phenomenon

by David W Temple

Lower, longer, wider. Often outrageously designed—and often enough outrageously impractical for real-word use (David Davis calls them “comic book fantasies” in his Introduction)—these show cars were the most American of American cars and American lifestyle.

De Dion Bouton, An Illustrated Guide to Type & Specification 1905–1914

by Michael Edwards

They were the world’s largest automobile manufacturer in the early days. This book shows how trying to be everything to everyone is a heavy cross to bear—and can ruin you.

Remember Those Great Volkswagen Ads?

by Alfredo Marcantonio, David Abbott, John O’Driscoll

Hindsight is everything. What is now considered one of the greatest ad campaigns EVER was dismissed at the time by the very man who hatched it as a total mistake!

MotorBinder: Classic Photographs from the Golden Age of Motor Racing

by Roy Spencer

Not just another catch-all generic photo book! This is a story, told in period photos, of mostly west coast racing seen from the perspective of someone who participated fielding his own cars and for-hire drivers.