Nigel Trow

Maserati, The Family Silver

October 31, 2017 By pete

“Maserati, The Family Silver,” is an extremely important book; over 15 years in the making, it is the most comprehensive book on Maserati ever written and it may well be the last such book in English. It is the winner of the 2016 Guild of Motoring Writers Mercedes/Montagu of Beaulieu Trophy. (Photos in this review courtesy the Publisher.)

Looking for comparisons

I look on my bookshelves to see what we have on other car manufacturers which are similar to Nigel Trow’s 800 page two-volume epic on the history of Maserati: I see very little to compare. [Read more…] about Maserati, The Family Silver

Lancia and De Virgilio: At The Center

October 7, 2014 By pete

Title: Lancia and De Virgilio: At The Center
Author: Geoffrey Goldberg
Prefaces: Luigi De Virgilio, Miles C. Collier
Format: Hardcover, 10 ¾” by 11 ½”, 332 pages
Photos: 240 black-and-white and 39 color photographs; 231 illustrations
Footnotes, Index, Bibliography and Appendixes
Retail Price: $99.95/£65.00/€80.00
ISBN-13: 978 1 935007 25-8
To order, call 602-852-9500, (800) 831-1758, or visit www.bullpublishing.com

Review by Nigel Trow
All photos courtesy Geoff Goldberg/David Bull

I met Francesco De Virgilio occasionally during the 1960s and 70s, mostly in Turin, but for the last time at Mugello in 1981, during the Vincenzo Lancia Centenary celebrations that I helped to organize. He was a warm and friendly man of great charm, an engineer, a musician and an easy conversationalist full of fascinating stories about Lancia during the previous 40 years.

Geoff Goldberg’s illuminating book, Lancia and De Virgilio: At The Center, fleshes out those conversations wonderfully, providing an unusually intimate portrait of the man and the company during the last decade of Lancia family ownership. This is the proper stuff of history, which always concerns human activity and its consequences. [Read more…] about Lancia and De Virgilio: At The Center

Gianni Lancia, 1924-2014

August 19, 2014 By pete

Last of the Glory Days; testing the D50 with Ascari at Caselle Airport. Courtesy Nigel Trow.

By Nigel Trow

Sigmund Freud, Vincenzo Lancia’s older contemporary, would have had much to say about the life of Lancia’s son, Gianni, who died on June 30th 2014 at his home on Cap Ferrat, France. Born in Turin in November 1924, Gianni was the middle child of three and the only son of Vincenzo and Adele Lancia. The children were close in age; Anna Maria, the eldest, being born in 1922 and Eleonora, in 1926 (tragically murdered by her disturbed daughter in 1996). They were left fatherless in their early teens by Vincenzo’s sudden death in February 1937, and for Gianni, not yet 13 years old, the prospect of having to take his father’s place must have loomed large. [Read more…] about Gianni Lancia, 1924-2014