Shah of Iran

Review by Pete Vack

We have added the previously published Borzou Sepasi story at the end of this review for your information.

“This is the car that I wanted, and I don’t want anything else!” exclaimed the Crown Prince of Persia, referring to what was to be his first car, given to him for his 13th birthday in 1932. The Hispano Suiza J12 Saoutchik was stunning. A chauffer would drive young Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to his exclusive boarding school in Switzerland in the new Hispano. As the story goes, the Crown Prince hoped he would be received as the royalty he was, but his classmates were far more impressed with the car than its royal occupant. [Read more…] about Fit for a King, Reviewed

By Pete Vack
All photos from the book, Fit for a King, The Royal Garage of the Shahs of Iran

Like many of us, as a boy Borzou Sepasi would go to the local newsstand with his father and ask if he could purchase one of the foreign car magazines such as Autocar. He would take it home and painstakingly translate the text one word at time, devouring the information about the rare cars he could only see in the pages of these magazines. Like many of us, Sepasi became an expert in a field where there were few, a pioneer on the subject of European classic cars. He became a car guy, a true enthusiast, a seeker of knowledge, and finally a motoring journalist and award-winning author. But unlike all of us, Sepasi was born, bred and educated in Tehran, Iran in 1978 just at the beginning of the Islamic Revolution.

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