The automobile has long been a symbol of status, power, and autonomy, and ever since King Tut rolled through Egypt on his golden-wheeled chariot, artists and drivers have dreamed up mobile masterpieces. A striking photographic tribute and social history, Road Show navigates a path across high and low art, showing how people around the world are transforming their vehicles into stunning folk art, obsessive collections, social commentary, and visionary performances. In this fascinating showcase, we see how Henry Ford’s motto, “Any color as long as it’s black,” has been hung out to dry. From the Wienermobile to a hand-carved wooden Ferrari that drives in the canals of Venice to a giant red stiletto heel, Road Show brings the “museum of the streets” to life.
When our young heroes began returning from World War II, they applied the knowledge gained from Uncle Sam towards the fledgling hot rod movement. While speeds increased, rodders learned the hard way just how dangerous it was to “drag it out” on the city streets. In the mid 50s, organized drag racing gave hot rodders a safe place to race. Cars evolved from pre-war coupes and sedans to crude “rail jobs,” which were stripped and narrowed frame rails with nothing more than an engine, driveline, seat, and steering gear. As hot rodders were the true Mothers of Invention, the cars later became hand-made, finely crafted “Slingshot Dragsters.” Dubbed the “Kings of the Sport,” these supercharged, fuel-injected Slingshots burned exotic fuels and captured the attention of every young enthusiast from coast to coast. The cars dazzled with gleaming chrome, Candy Apple, Pearlescent, and Metalflake paint jobs, while the nitromethane fuel produced an unforgettable thunderous sound. This new volume contains all the stars that waged war on quarter-mile strips of asphalt from California to Maine. It’s a vivid pictorial display that captures the true essence of extreme acceleration in all its glory.
The Chevrolet Corvette began its storied existence in 1953 as an almost haphazard attempt at building an American sports car to rival the European offerings of the time. Since then, its history has ebbed and flowed with the times, with stunning peaks and valleys of design, horsepower, and quality. It has grown to be an American icon, representing the capability of domestic engineering on the streets and racetracks of the world.
The entire history of the car is represented on the pages of The Illustrated Corvette in artful style. Author/artist Scott Teeters delivers well-researched facts and figures on all of the production Corvettes to date, and many of the remarkable racing cars, special editions, concept cars, and tuner variants crafted over the years. Additionally, the author offers his passionate review of a potential new Corvette design.
Anyone who has ever admired a Corvette (either from afar or from the enviable position behind the wheel) will appreciate and enjoy The Illustrated Corvette. The thoughtful opinions and facts presented, teamed with the incredibly detailed artwork, makes this book a truly unique offering.
The photos in this edition are black & white
The greatest vintage Ferraris carry stories with them, and part of the value of each unique car is the depth and richness of its history. Edwin K. Niles has been buying and selling Ferraris for most of his life, and the more than one hundred that passed through his hands include some of the most storied and rare examples in existence.
This lavish two book set covers the cars and writings of Niles, offering Ferrari enthusiasts an intimate look into the heritage of some of the world’s most desirable collectible Ferraris.
In Volume 1, Niles recounts his encounter with each car, touching upon the its history and including colorful stories such as how he discovered a 1954 250 Europa Coupe in an underground storage garage while on holiday in Italy and bought it immediately after the owner took him on a screaming ride through the narrow streets of Rome.
The stories of Ed and his cars take you on a ride through Ferrari history, meeting the historians, collectors, and celebrities who live and breathe the cars that bear the prancing horse.
Volume 1 of this set includes a complete inventory of all the Ferraris owned by Niles, with archival photography, drawings, records, and entertaining stories about each one.
Volume 2 collects Niles’s writings about Ferrari, including his colorful column, “Oldtimer’s Corner,” that ran in the FCA Southwest Region’s Sempre Ferrari. Included on those pages, are accounts of a ring of Italian car counterfeiters, the Berlinetta in the barn, the ill-fated but fast Dino, and more tales of living and loving Ferrari.
In short, if you love and live Ferrari, this two-volume set is a must.
2 Volumes in slipcase
372 Pages
12 × 12 × 3.5 in
The inspiring, heart-pumping true story of soldiers turned cyclists and the historic 1919 Tour de France that helped to restore a war-torn country and its people.
On June 29, 1919, one day after the Treaty of Versailles brought about the end of World War I, nearly seventy cyclists embarked on the thirteenth Tour de France. From Paris, the war-weary men rode down the western coast on a race that would trace the country’s border, through seaside towns and mountains to the ghostly western front. Traversing a cratered postwar landscape, the cyclists faced near-impossible odds and the psychological scars of war. Most of the athletes had arrived straight from the front, where so many fellow countrymen had suffered or died. The cyclists’ perseverance and tolerance for pain would be tested in a grueling, monthlong competition.
An inspiring true story of human endurance, Sprinting Through No Man’s Land explores how the cyclists united a country that had been torn apart by unprecedented desolation and tragedy. It shows how devastated countrymen and women can come together to celebrate the adventure of a lifetime and discover renewed fortitude, purpose, and national identity in the streets of their towns.
Walter: The Missing Link chronicles the life and times of a remarkable motorcycle affectionately known as Walter®
Walter is a feature-length narrative documentary featuring Walter, a 1913 Harley-Davidson Motorcycle Truck, and his former caretaker Michael W. Schuster. This is truly an extraordinary barn-find story that tracks Walter’s service mission delivering on the streets of old Milwaukee, then through forty years of desolation while stored in a horse barn, and finally his rebirth many decades later through a meticulous restoration by Ally Schuster and his grandson Michael. Walter ultimately became an acknowledged motorcycle artifact recognized as the last-known Harley-Davidson Motorcycle Truck in existence. This remarkable motorcycle’s story and the related experiences of those touched by him have delighted enthusiasts and inspired us all to embrace our past and forge relationships for our future.
Walter: The Missing Link chronicles the life and times of a remarkable motorcycle affectionately known as Walter®
Walter is a feature-length narrative documentary featuring Walter, a 1913 Harley-Davidson Motorcycle Truck, and his former caretaker Michael W. Schuster. This is truly an extraordinary barn-find story that tracks Walter’s service mission delivering on the streets of old Milwaukee, then through forty years of desolation while stored in a horse barn, and finally his rebirth many decades later through a meticulous restoration by Ally Schuster and his grandson Michael. Walter ultimately became an acknowledged motorcycle artifact recognized as the last-known Harley-Davidson Motorcycle Truck in existence. This remarkable motorcycle’s story and the related experiences of those touched by him have delighted enthusiasts and inspired us all to embrace our past and forge relationships for our future.
Stefan Bogner’s most personal book to date, charting the ideal tour through the alps – three countries and fourteen passes over four daysAfter his last book Escapes, Stefan Bogner returns to the Alps again with this beautifully illustrated book. This time he not only photographed particular routes, but he looked for the ideal tour through the Alps: 3 countries, 14 passes – the perfect little escape for 4 days. Different from Bogner’s photographs in Escapes or Curves where Bogner presents dreamlike empty streets, Porsche Drive focuses on the journey in Porsche models like Porsche 906, Porsche 911, Porsche 918 and more. Stefan Bogner also drives his own Porsche 911 1970 ST.Jan Karl Baedeker’s sweeping lyrics make the track even more tangible – almost as if you were at the wheel of your own Porsche. In addition to Bogner’s amazing photographs, Porsche Drive offers information on each route and height profile, allowing the reader to follow itinerary. Text in English and German.
A monumentally researched biography of one of the nineteenth century’s wealthiest self-made Americans…Well-written and worthwhile” (The Wall Street Journal) it’s the rags-to-riches frontier tale of an Irish immigrant who outwits, outworks, and outmaneuvers thousands of rivals to take control of Nevada’s Comstock Lode.
Born in 1831, John W. Mackay was a penniless Irish immigrant who came of age in New York City, went to California during the Gold Rush, and mined without much luck for eight years. When he heard of riches found on the other side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in 1859, Mackay abandoned his claim and walked a hundred miles to the Comstock Lode in Nevada.
Over the course of the next dozen years, Mackay worked his way up from nothing, thwarting the pernicious “Bank Ring” monopoly to seize control of the most concentrated cache of precious metals ever found on earth, the legendary “Big Bonanza,” a stupendously rich body of gold and silver ore discovered 1,500 feet beneath the streets of Virginia City, the ultimate Old West boomtown. But for the ore to be worth anything it had to be found, claimed, and successfully extracted, each step requiring enormous risk and the creation of an entirely new industry.
Now Gregory Crouch tells Mackay’s amazing story—how he extracted the ore from deep underground and used his vast mining fortune to crush the transatlantic telegraph monopoly of the notorious Jay Gould. “No one does a better job than Crouch when he explores the subject of mining, and no one does a better job than he when he describes the hardscrabble lives of miners” (San Francisco Chronicle). Featuring great period photographs and maps, The Bonanza King is a dazzling tour de force, a riveting history of Virginia City, Nevada, the Comstock Lode, and America itself.
In the early 1990s François Castaing challenged a group of free-spirited Chrysler engineers to design and build a unique automobile for the vast number of people around the world who could afford nothing but a bicycle. This project became known internally as The China Car.
This book closely examines the challenges of producing plastic car bodywork, the difficulties of selling the car inside the company as well as outside to consumers, and the reasons why the project was unsuccessful and finally canceled. It also provides an unflinching look at how decisions were made at Chrysler.
Early on, the team discovered that molding large parts of the new vehicle in recycled plastic might be the only way to achieve their goal. Polyethylene Terephthalate or PET is the common plastic material most of our bottles are made of. PET is safe, reusable, and inexpensive, but as an example, we in the USA throw away 35 billion empty bottles every year to landfills, streets, parks, and waterways.
Despite overcoming technical hurdles thanks to the strong interpersonal relationships and problem solving between engineers and their suppliers, including the car s successful use of recycled, molded PET bodywork, the China Car never reached the market.
Spectacular Illumination: Neon Los Angeles, 1925-1965 is a spectacular collection of vintage photography that showcases the glowing neon heritage of the City of Angels. More than 200 images fill its pages. L.A. has long been recognized as the most vibrant city in America, and part of its radiance comes from streets lined with neon signs during the Golden Age of neon from 1925 to 1965. Photographer and historian Tom Zimmerman shows images that depict, in both color and in black-and-white, what Raymond Chandler, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and countless other writers have tried to put into words. Spectacular Illumination tells a story of a city that has glowed, now glows, and, thanks to institutions such as the Museum of Neon Art, will glow forever.
In the early seventies were the streets in Czechoslovakia full of classic cars in their twilight years. Private cars from various origins were kept on the road until their last breath. In the thirties, for example, Czechoslovakia was an industrialized country with an innovative automobile industry. Many of these pre-war cars were still on the road when our photographers visited the country that still laid behind the Iron Curtain. Also a lot of German cars left over by the Wehrmacht, American cars and of course vehicles from ‘friendly’ Russia were subject of our photos. Hundreds of photos of those cars are gathered in the two volumes of POZOR! (Czech for Beware!), many also in colour. Often pictured in splendid settings, such as the classical city of Prague, they form an unique document from the seventies of the last century.
Dig into the muscle cars, advertisements, and marketing tools employed by Chrysler in this first-ever book published on Mopar’s Dodge Scat Pack and Plymouth Rapid Transit System.
This volume by author and historian Jim Schild includes thorough examinations of the Charger R/T, Coronet R/T, Dart GTS, Super Bee, Daytona, Challenger R/T, Demon 340, Road Runner, GTX, Cuda, Duster 340, and Sport Fury GT.
1968 was set to be a pivotal year for Dodge as fresh designs debuted on the Coronet and Charger platforms. Short on sales but not on performance, Dodge marketers wanted to initiate a program that would ignite brand awareness while maintaining the performance edge they had on the streets. With “Dodge Fever” in full swing, the Scat Pack was born.
Two years later, Plymouth’s Rapid Transit System followed Dodge’s Scat Pack. Both programs relied heavily on grouping their performance-oriented cars with messages aimed at the under-35 audience. Chrysler incentivized owners to join its clubs by offering free merchandise. Plymouth took its show on the road with the Rapid Transit System Caravan, featuring prototypes that could be seen at dealerships. The result was one of the most memorable, highly successful marketing campaigns of the muscle car era.
Whether you own a muscle car from the Dodge Scat Pack or Plymouth’s Rapid Transit System era, are in the market for one, or just still have Dodge Fever, this volume will be a welcome addition to your shelf.
With open-topped styling and performance evocative of the classic sportscars of the 1960s, the Mazda MX-5/Eunos had to be a huge international success – and that’s exactly what it’s become. Now a familiar sight on the streets and boulevards of the world, the MX-5 is owned by real enthusiasts, the kind of people who will want to have hands-on involvement with the maintenance and repair of their prized possession. For those enthusiasts, here is what we believe to be the best, easiest to use workshop manual in the world.
Author Rod Grainger set out to create a new kind of owner’s workshop manual – friendly, easy to understand, easy to use, and yet more detailed than any other manual currently available: two years later, the Mazda MX-5 Miata 1.6 Enthusiast’s Workshop Manual was the result. Rod, and fellow enthusiasts Pete and Judith, stripped down an MX-5 in an ordinary domestic garage using ordinary tools and, in the process, took over 1,500 step-by-step photographs. The result of all this work is a superbly detailed text which passes on to the reader every detail of important jobs, including how problems can be overcome without resorting to special tools. This manual even tells the reader the size of nuts and bolts so they can start work with the right tools and all clearances and torque values are given in the text as the reader needs them. At paragraph level, a unique symbol system provides cross-references or tells the reader that there are helpful associated photos, drawings and tables. The dreaded words “reassembly is a reversal of the dismantling procedure” are banned, and every task, from changing a bulb to rebuilding the gearbox, is described in full. Besides detailed coverage of maintenance and repairs, this manual includes advice on rustproofing, cosmetic tuning and mechanical tuning. Rod’s manual was prepared with the assistance of Mazda, and it applies to all 1.6 litre models built between 1989 and 1995. Most of the manual is relevant to later 1.6 litre models, too.
Motion Performance tells the inside story of how it all happened. Brilliantly illustrated with period pictures and modern color photos, the book takes readers along as Cobras, Chevrolets, Oldsmobiles, even Volkswagen Beetles roll into the shop to get torn down and rebuilt into cars unbeatable on the streets and drag strips.
Marty Schorr gives a first-hand account of seven years of high-performance life–and of how it all came to a screeching halt at the hands of the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency. A once-in-a-lifetime tale of power and speed, told by one of the principals who put that performance within reach, Motion Performance makes the story of a briefly and thrillingly lived dream available to everyone.
In terms of public image, the scooter has long played second fiddle to the motorcycle. Of course, there is a large dose of stereotype in the readings of both kinds of machines and at heart both have provided the same thing: escape, independence, mobility and a certain kind of cool. Following on from Chris Haddon’s highly successful my cool motorcycle, my cool scooter showcases beautiful scooters from all corners of the world and celebrates the scooter’s history thus far.The humble scooter is much more than a mode of transport – it is fashionable, stylish and trendy. As many of the stories featured in this book demonstrate, owners take their scooters on miraculous adventures from city streets to glorious country escapes. The book explores the most iconic brands of scooter from the well-known Vespa to the classic Goggo. Each section covers a selection of historical information, owners’ stories and vehicle notes. For scooter owners or those interested in scooter history this book will inspire and intrigue readers.
Starting in the early 1900s, Santa Barbara County became home to over a dozen motorcycle racecourses. Not one of those battlegrounds survives today. Pershing Park once had a stadium, Elings Park on Las Positas Road was Veronica Springs Hill Climb Course, and before that, La Conchita was home to hill climbing and TT events. Motorcycling in Santa Barbara County will take the readers back in time to the glory days of two wheels on city streets and engage them in competition at its racetracks. Preserved in these pages are the firsthand stories of the men that competed on these courses as far back as 1924.
Nestled between Palm Beach’s exclusive boutiques and the lavish lifestyle of Miami’s South Beach rests the charming city of Hollywood, Florida. The charismatic land developer J.W. Young first envisioned this prosperous and well-appointed town in the early twentieth century, and within in a few short decades carved an elegant resort town from a veritable wilderness. Divided into two parts, A Guide to Historic Hollywood by local historian Joan Mickelson, the daughter of a city founder, provides a history of Hollywood’s formative years as well as a guide through the historic streets of this beautiful Florida city. From the roaring twenties to the post-war fifties, Mickelson highlights the buildings, people and events vital to the history of this now thriving coastal landmark. A Guide to Historic Hollywood brings to life Hollywood’s characters and pioneers, which have shaped the city through its long and diverse history.
Are phantoms “alive” and walking the streets of Tinseltown and beyond?
Hollywood. Film capital of the world. Haunted Hollywood brings together twenty-five stories that capture both the spirit—and the spirits—of Tinseltown. These tales concern historic landmarks, theaters, watering holes, hotels, and houses that are haunted by movie stars, television personalities, and other celebrities. You will be shivering in your seat as you read about all these and more:
• Film siren Jean Harlow died at only twenty-six, but many believe she’s still “living” in her old home outside Beverly Hills.
• Elke Sommer, the German-born actress and artist, is convinced a ghost saved her life by waking her after her house caught fire. Who’s to say?
• John Wayne has ridden off into the Final Sunset, but he apparently misses his private yacht. He’s been known to come aboard from time to time. . .
