Satisfy your dream collector-car desires with this one-stop reference for starting or expanding your collection beyond traditional classics and muscle cars.
Focusing on the interests and needs of Generation X and Millennial car collectors, The NextGen Guide to Car Collecting offers a concise history of car collecting to present day, guidance on car buying and living the car-collector life, and an overview of collector cars with a focus on cars built from the 1970s through the 1990s while also touching on more contemporary cars. Chapters highlight Japanese, American, and European cars, particularly those models that have experienced the greatest growth in collector interest over the past decade.
The NextGen Guide to Car Collecting explores the many ways the Internet and social media have changed the classic car marketplace. You’ll learn how to buy a classic car online without suffering buyer’s remorse, as well as the four critical keys to a happy collector-vehicle relationship: 1) possessing discretionary cash for the initial purchase; 2) obtaining a thorough knowledge of the car and its ownership; 3) the critical pre-purchase inspection; and 4) access to a work space.
You’ll also find out why the popularity of late twentieth-century specialty cars will continue to grow (think increasing electronic complication and the still-large number of enthusiasts for whom “self-driving” means driving themselves) and explore the attributes that makes these cars desirable collector vehicles.
In addition, the book looks at the significant increases in quality and reliability of post-1970s machines and how that impacts their collectibility. Finally, learn why expectations that your newfound classic could outlast our current crop of lithium-ion-dependent electric cars may not be unrealistic: recent developments like ride-hailing and sharing services; expanded public transit; rental bikes and scooters; and garage condos and other storage options could actually extend the life of your “new” classic permitting you to truly tailor the use of your classics.
Whether your collection requires a one-stall garage or a pole barn, the practical, useful information and keen perspective of The NextGen Guide to Car Collecting will ensure you pull this volume from your shelf time and again.
Driving Force: Automobiles and the New American City 1900-1930 (Angel City Press) explores how Los
Angeles’s enigmatic car culture propelled the explosive growth of America’s passion for cars. And with thoroughly researched text and page-after-page of vintage images, it shows how roadblocks that limited the sales of automobiles in the rest of the country, were eliminated in a new-thinking city in the earliest days of the car industry.
At the dawn of the twentieth century, as Los Angeles transformed from a rugged outpost to a booming metropolis, so too did the fledgling automobile simultaneously come of age. Ignited by an unlikely and visionary mix of entrepreneurs who ventured into unknown territory, early adopters broadened the market and convinced the public that cars were no longer a luxury—they were the ultimate modern necessity. From these early enthusiasts, men and women in various business recognized that the automobile would change society and wanted a piece of that action. The city’s auto business emerged initially among bicycle shop owners, carriage retailers, and automobile aficionados who started selling—and repairing!—cars. Their workshops thrived, expanded, and eventually became dealerships, the key component to the auto boom.
In this first major history of dealers at work—and one of the first books to chronicle the early history of cars in Los Angeles—authors Darryl Holter and Stephen Gee share the untold story of pioneering automobile dealers who seized the chance to join a start-up industry that reinvented an American city. Some became wealthy and powerful, others failed. But the lure of the automobile never wavered.
The L.A. dealers helped change the way cars were sold. They championed selling cars on credit while accepting“used cars” that buyers “traded in” so they could buy a new one. They introduced the West Coast to the concept of dealerships with service bays for on-site car repairs; persuaded manufacturers to design cars to their specifications and created custom vehicles and innovations that were copied around the country.
With more than 150 spectacular vintage images—many never before published—Driving Force brings to life the people who made the automobile an icon of the modern American city. In its pages, readers will discover how the story of the automobile is interwoven with Southern California’s unique topography and sun-drenched climate; a new era of women’s rights, and a growing female influence on automobile design; the creation of the Los Angeles Auto Show and the remarkable 1929 fire that threatened to destroy it; and how car dealers launched renowned L.A. radio and television stations, including KNX, KFI, and KCBS-KCAL.
As car collector extraordinaire Jay Leno explains in his Foreword to Driving Force, “Darryl Holter shows that auto retailers connected manufacturers to buyers, changing America and shaping the history, economy, and culture of Los Angeles.”
Stock-car racing star, country singer, and sports broadcaster Kyle Petty shares his familial legacy, intertwined with NASCAR’s founding and history, in Swerve or Die―written with Pulitzer Prize-winner Ellis Henican, the New York Times bestselling coauthor of In the Blink of an Eye.
“Born into racing royalty. The only son of NASCAR’s winningest driver ever. The grandson of one of the sport’s true pioneers. The nephew of our very first Hall of Fame engine builder. It’s quite a family to represent, and through it all, I’ve somehow managed to keep being Kyle.”
Kyle Petty won his very first stock-car race, the Daytona ARCA 200, in 1979 when he was eighteen. Hailed as a third-generation professional NASCAR racer, he became an instant celebrity in circles he had been around all his young life. Despite being the grandson and son of racing champions Lee Petty and Richard Petty, Kyle didn’t inherit innate talent. Working in his family’s North Carolina race shop from an early age, he learned all about car mechanics and maintenance long before he got behind the wheel. And although Kyle continued the family business, driving “Petty blue” colored cars emblazoned with his grandfather’s #42―a number once used by Marty Robbins―his career took a different route than his forebears’.
In Swerve or Die: Life at My Speed in the First Family of NASCAR Racing, Kyle chronicles his life on and off the racetrack, presenting his insider’s perspective of growing up throughout the sport’s popular rise in American culture. In between driving and running Petty Enterprises for thirty years, Kyle took some detours into country music, voiced Cal Weathers in Pixar’s Cars 3, and started his annual motorcycle Kyle Petty Charity Ride Across America. And when his nineteen-year-old son Adam, a fourth-generation racing Petty, tragically lost his life on the track, Kyle founded Victory Junction, a camp for children with chronic and serious medical conditions in Adam’s name―with help from Academy Award-winning actor and motorsports enthusiast Paul Newman.
Filled with NASCAR history, stories of his family’s careers, and anecdotes about some of stock-car racing’s most famous drivers, Kyle’s memoir also tackles the sport’s evolution, discussing how welcoming diverse racers, improving car and track safety features, and integrating green technology will benefit NASCAR’s competitors and fans in the future.
