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

A Reliable Car and a Woman Who Knows It: The First Coast-to-Coast Auto Trips by Women, 1899–1916

by Curt McConnell

McConnell’s two related earlier books about transcontinental trips are supplemented here by the story of pioneering women drivers who tackled great distances just to show it could be done. None of the three books makes reference to the others and we continue to be puzzled by this odd bit of marketing strategy.

Carriages Without Horses

J. Frank Duryea and the Birth of the American Automobile Industry

by Richard P. Scharchburg

This small hardcover history book focuses on which of the Duryea brothers, Charles or Frank, contributed the most to the design and construction of the first US car put into series production. Charles always claimed credit for the design of the car, thanking his younger brother Frank for being “his indispensable helper.”

As Old as the Industry: Riley, 1898–1969

by David G. Styles

When it first came out in 1982, this book was received with much acclaim and the prognostication—not just by the Riley world—that it couldn’t be improved upon. This despite the author’s insistence that it can neither be “complete” nor “100% accurate” given the source material it is able to draw on.

Corporate Power: American Democracy, and the Automobile Industry

by Stan Luger

The introduction to this book advises that it has grown out of a dissertation the author submitted to the University of New York. It is a scholarly study of the history of the power and influence of the automobile industry on governmental policies and the interactions of government and industry

Can-Am Cars in Detail: Machines and Minds Racing Unrestrained

by Pete Lyons & Peter Harholdt

If you know your cars and you saw the cover photo without any text, you’d know right away you’re looking at a Can-Am car. Ain’t nothin’ like it. The subtitle says it all: Unrestrained. Unrestricted. Formula Libre. Anything goes.

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 consisting of several hundred photographs with relevant captions. Argetsinger has written a remarkable and fitting tribute to one of America’s greatest race drivers.

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

by Eberhard Reuss

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.

The Marmon Heritage

by George Philip & Stacey Pankiw Hanley

Marmon approached the auto industry methodically by hiring university trained engineers and building thoroughly tested prototypes. They then designed bespoke production facilities to build the end result.

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.

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.

Tatra, The Legacy of Hans Ledwinka (1st ed)

by Ivan Margolius & John G. Henry

Who actually designed the original air-cooled volkswagen? Was it Ferdinand Porsche, or was it a Tatra creation appropriated by the Nazis? This book gives you the Tatra side of the story.

Ferdinand Porsche, Genesis of Genius: Road, Racing and Aviation Innovation 1900 to 1933

by Karl Ludvigsen

For a paltry $100 you are getting a veritable education in matters political, economical, scientific, and psychological. It isn’t just about a precocious youth and ambitious engineer, but about the world and times he lived in.

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