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

Villiers: Everybody’s Engine

by Rob Carrick and Mick Walker

Villiers may have started building “everybody’s” engine way back in 1912 but unless you’re from the two-stroke small-engine world, chances are you do not know them. In which case you would do well to start with a look at Appendix 5 “Industrial Power Unit Users”.

Spitfire Manual
 1940

by Dilip Sarkar (Editor)

From the “Forget-Me-Nots for Fighters” to many other instructional booklets and manuals for pilots of the famous Supermarine Spitfire, this book gathers many oddities not normally seen by outsiders.

Kept in the Dark

The Denial to Bomber Command of Vital Ultra and Other Intelligence During World War II

by John Stubbington

Even the casual reader will know that towards the end of WWII allied forces had the capability of intercepting coded German communications. Think Enigma and Lorenz machines, and Bletchley Park aka Station X, the UK’s main decryption establishment.

Woodward Avenue: Cruising the Legendary Strip

by Robert Genat

To anyone who has an affinity for car and youth culture in America, Woodward Avenue is an iconic name when it comes to cruising and street racing. “Detroit” is hardly synonymous with “hotbed of culture” and what happened on Woodward Ave. happened in a thousand other places but…

The Rise of Jaguar: A Detailed Study of the “Standard” Era 1928–1950

by Barrie Price

Jaguar is certainly on the rise today, with their new crop of XJ models being hailed as landmark cars and possibly the best ones the company ever built. A far cry from the fragile, eccentric original XJ, and, given the firm’s ups and downs, not at all a development one could have expected.

Fast Ladies: Female Racing Drivers 1888 to 1970

by Jean François Bouzanquet

This is the English translation of a French book. The topic of female racing drivers has been a wildly neglected one in the literature and even this book scratches only the surface by focusing only on European drivers (with two American exceptions, McCluggage and Skelton) and on only 49 of them in detail.

Grand Prix Battlegrounds: A Comprehensive Guide to All Formula 1 Circuits Since 1950

by Christopher Hilton

This well-thought out book is another feather in Hilton’s already crowded cap. He isn’t just disgorging dates and facts and figures but paints a picture. In this book he is your tour guide, and like every good tour guide, he shows you things even the locals don’t know.

French Etceterini Miscellanea

A review of three slim specialty French books:

La 4CV Bosvin-Michel-Spéciale by Robert Bosvin

La Saga sportive de la Renault 4CV by François Rivage

Sportives tricolores, 1950–70 by Jean Paul Decker

The Classic Citroëns, 1935–1975

by John Reynolds

First things first, this book really goes beyond 1975, devoting the penultimate chapter to the 1974–1989 GSX and a brief final chapter to the 1976–2000 cars built by the PSA Group in the post-Michelin era. Then cars of the “classic” era to which the title alludes are quite different from what came later.

My Father the Car: Memoirs of My Life With Studebaker

by Stu Chapman

North Americans have always known about Daimler, or Daimler-Benzes after these two amalgamated in 1926. However, in spite of Max Hoffman’s best efforts, it wasn’t until the company, by then called Mercedes-Benz, made an arrangement with Studebaker that it really achieved a North American presence.

Driving Forces: The Grand Prix Racing World Caught in the Maelstrom of the Third Reich

by Peter Stevenson

The pre–WWII German Grand Prix cars remain among the most fascinating of machines for vintage motorsports enthusiasts. This book takes a different tack and looks at the human side of the story.

Dictionary of World Coachbuilders and Car Stylists

by Marián Suman-Hreblay

This impressive reference work lists all of the well known—and numerous not-so-well known—car coachbuilders and stylists in the world: 3174 car coachbuilding companies and design centers, and 1161 car stylists and related personalities.

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