By Brandes Elitch
In the first half of this article, I discussed the early days of automotive literature. Back in the fifties and sixties, there was a dearth of books on automotive subjects. There were some iconic books that most people had on their bookshelves: Ken Purdy’s “Kings of the Road” would have to top that list. But the best automotive writers typically wrote magazine articles, not books. This changed, fortunately, and now it is easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of newly published books. In this column, I will try to give you something to think about on this subject.
I was going to try to start with a “top ten” list of automotive books that everyone should have in their collection. Then, I read this wonderful quote from Ken Shubert, published in the Wild About Cars website (www.wildaboutcars.com). “We are not in this for the same reason. Sure, we all have “old cars” in common, but what we’re in it for starts to take different direction right from the start. We come from different walks of life. We have varying amounts of time, money, and energy. We have different ideas of what we want to do. We have different priorities. We have different skill levels. We like different eras, different makes, colors, options. Diversity is a good thing. What if we all wanted the same car, year, model, etc.?”
Diverse subjects but excellent topics and top notch authors...
So, there is no magic Top Ten list. You could focus on individual marques (hopefully, ones that are in your garage), racing, engineering, repair and restoration, racecar driver biographies and circuit/race histories, industry analysis, domestic v. foreign, not to mention the triumvirate that seem to dominate bookstores these days: of NASCAR, Harleys, and hot rods (no comment). If you asked a Brit, he would come up with names like Anthony Blight, William Boddy, Doug Nye, William Court Chris Nixon, and Jeremy Walton. A Frenchman or Italian would have different names. It’s a big world, car collecting.