MotorSports

Monday, May 16, 2005

VINTAGE AMERICAN ROAD RACING CARS 1950 -1990

Book Review
by Doug Stokes
Authors HAROLD W. PACE and MARK R. BRINKER
Pages 304 Size 10x10+/-
Pictures 300 +/- Color and Black and White
PUBLISHED BY MOTORBOOKS INTERNATIONAL ST. PAUL, MN.
ISBN 0-7603-1783-6 2004 $60.00

First of all, I was very pleased to be asked by editor Tom Jakups (actually, I asked him) to review this book. 

If you are even slightly as enraptured by these halcyon times as I am; put this journal down and go buy this book.  That’s the short form, now here’s the full review:

Duarte, California, May 10, 2005 (WDB). ...  It’s exceedingly difficult for me to understand how a book so wonderfully comprehensive can be so very entertaining.  How could such a book crammed with hard facts, and cold figures, and exact measurements be such a magic carpet ride back to the halcyon days of American road racing?  I’ll just answer my own question if you don’t mind: “Let Harold Pace and Doctor Mark Brinker loose to research and write ‘Vintage American Road Racing Cars 1950-1970’ and you have a real masterwork.”

This great new book, which took this pair just over a year to write, is just a sheer joy to leaf through.  Within its 304 pages the reader will be reminded of (or introduced to) the days of American racing when average people (all with their passion gauges pegged) dreamed, designed, engineered, scrounged, built, and raced their own creations. 

You’ve heard of many of the protagonists the likes of Shelby, Gurney, Kurtis, Arciero, Reventlow, Penske, and Hall …They’re all here … But there’s over 500 more in here!  Names and machines, each with a story, each with a reason, each a part of the grand tapestry.  Read it straight through (one guess on who did that), or pick it up a page at a time; either way you’ll never cease to be spellbound by the facts of the matter.

Brightly written, accurate, articulate, this large-scale book is totally unstuffy and (as you must have gathered by now) eminently readable.  To say the book is “well illustrated” might be a click or two too weak.  This book is chocked-full of great photos that put flesh and bones on the memories of a wonderfully diverse group of north American road racing cars. 

These are the true tales of machines that were mostly hand made because their makers had a better idea of how it should be done.  Of particular interest are the mini-interviews that this book is seasoned with.  The authors tracked down many of the men who built the cars and asked them some of the questions that we all would like to know.  The results are insightful, modest, and now (thanks to Hal P. and Doc B.), part of the permanent record, these notes personalize and humanize the book and it’s heroes all that much the more.

Sunday, May 15, 2005

Grand National America’s Golden Age of Motorcycle Racing

BOOK REVIEW:
by Doug Stokes
Author Joe Scalzo
Motorbooks International
ISBN 0-7603-2064-0
Pages 192 Size 10x10+/-
Black and White - 200
$34.95US

Duarte, California, December 24, 2004 (WDB). ... PRE-GRID: There’s always something achingly familiar about the best of Joe Scalzo’s racing books.

QUALIFYING: There’s something about the matter-of-fact way that Joe uses racers’ nicknames, about how he layers on detail upon detail, and smokes up emotions that only someone who had been there might know. 

These are not those public “secrets” that everyone has heard, these are none of the oft-told folk tales … And certainly not any of the stuff that’s been kicking around for years. 

This is the square shit, recalled, recorded, and (on paper at least) RE-LIVED by a guy who was there when it was all going down, and, who, happily enough, possesses the straight-ahead, square-shouldered, let-it-fly, wound-tight, eyes-open, teeth-clenched, gut-level writing talent to relate it back to us in what seems for all the world like real time. 

An example, Scalzo’s long out-of-print “Stand On The Gas” is the indelible record of American Sprint Car competition that, from page one, deliberately kicks clay right in your face, makes you nauseous from the smell of burning rubber and raw methanol, and then proceeds to get you all queasy airsick from the all the unscheduled flight time that his subjects collected before the crash wagon or the coroner collected them. 

That heart-hammering book from the 60’s laid bare the lives of the men who pounded those hulking pogues into the horrible high banks of Winchester way way too fast and then held on by sure dint of cussedness. 

Scalzo spit out the stories of the racers who raced each other with such a ferocity that most now believe Joe was exaggerating wildly … No way, no how, in fact, if anything, some think that this guy may have been playing it down a gear or two to make the telling a bit more palatable for the general public.

A couple of Scalzo “car” books that are still very much in print are his:  “American Dirt Track Racer”, and, “Indianapolis Roadsters 1952 – 1964” both of these MBI-published volumes pack a wallop as well.