BOOK REVIEW  By Ken Davies Gilbern – A Dragon’s Tale: The Definitive History of Wales’ only Production Car During Gilbern Cars existence – 1960 to 1974 – the marque had the distinction of being Wales’ only production car manufacturer. Esteemed motoring author Martin Morgan-Jones has captured the capricious history of the low volume Welsh car maker in his...

BOOK REVIEW  By Peter Baker SHADOW – The magnificent machines of a man of mystery  The quality of this book is outstanding, even by EVRO standards. It tells the story of Donald (Don) Robert Nichols, a complex personality, and his Formula One, Can-Am and Formula 5000 Shadow race cars, nicely blended together by well-respected historian and ex-race reporter Pete Lyons. Four hundre...

CLICK HERE – At Checkout enter Discount code RETRO10 BOOK REVIEW  By Peter Baker The All-American Hero and Jaguar’s Racing E-types – Briggs Cunningham’s Le Mans Dream, US road racing and the legendary Jaguar E-type I’ve noticed that recently book titles are becoming increasingly, almost as long as the book itself. However, in this case the extension is more t...

Click HERE – At the Checkout enter Discount code RETRO10 BOOK REVIEW  By Peter Baker Exceptional Cars 9: Ferrari 857S – The remarkable history of 0578M There are two very good reasons for buying this book, even before reading it. Firstly, it’s written by my Guild of Motoring Writers colleague, Ian Wagstaff, so you’re guaranteed a good story, well written and with a...

BOOK REVIEW  BY Peter Baker Formula 1: Car by Car 1950-59 We all know that in Grand Prix racing money talks, but here in Peter Higham’s superlative reference work it seems nothing is further from the truth. During the seasons 1950-59, private teams, even individuals, were circulating toe-to-toe with top professionals in a wide mix of cars. HWM, Connaught, Ferrari, Alfa Romeo. Moss,...

BOOK REVIEW  By Peter Baker TAKE RISK! – The amazing story of the people who made possible Richard Noble’s extreme projects on land, at sea and in the air Not much bigger than a paperback, but nicely bound with some great images, TAKE RISK! is a terrific read and possibly one of the best books of 2020. Richard tells a gripping story that blends dreams with reality, success with...

BOOK REVIEW  By Peter Baker Brooklands - The Sports Car Endurance Races It’s inevitable that Brooklands – The Sports Car Endurance Races, written by school master and enthusiast David Blumlein, as an informative work, be compared with William Boddy’s exhaustive History of the Brooklands Motor Course, which perhaps is a little unfair. After all, this was Boddy’s life ...

CLICK HERE – At Checkout enter Discount code: RETRO10 BOOK REVIEW  By Peter Baker Great Cars 14: Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe – The Autobiography of CSX2300 If ever a racer merited the title Great Car, it is the Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe. Very special in 1964, some of us will recall Jack Sears making the headlines when he exceeded 180mph during late night testing on the M1 mo...

CLICK HERE – At Checkout enter Discount Code: RETRO10 BOOK REVIEW  By Peter BakerPorter Profiles: Jaguar D-type – The story of XKD 526 This book, retailing at just £20.00, shares the same build quality as Porter Press International top end products, but with only 98 pages, including index, there is just less to enjoy.Only three Jaguar D-types went to Aust...

CLICK HERE – Discount code RETRO10 BOOK REVIEW  By Peter Baker Exceptional Cars 8: FerrarI 250 GT SWB – The remarkable history of 2689GT  Any book about Ferrari published by Porter Press International, and written by our friend Richard Heseltine, is worth adding to one’s collection, especially when it costs just £30.00 (or less when ordered through Retro-Speed ...

BOOK REVIEW  By Peter Baker  KTM X-BOW The KTM X-BOW, dramatic in appearance and packed with advanced technology, is the quintessential 21st century race car, built for the road. This intensely enthusiastic volume, written by Dr Thillainathan Pathmanathan and Dr. Anne Christina Reck, will provide the enthusiast of such projectiles with hours of entertainment, although I suspect they ...

BOOK REVIEW  By Peter Baker Niki Lauda: His competition history For those of you thinking: ‘Oh no, not another book about Niki Lauda’, stay with me, because this latest title from EVRO Publishing ignores the obvious, and instead concentrates on Niki’s surprisingly varied race career. John Watson MBE provides the foreword, Doug Nye the preface and, in conclusion, long ter...

BOOK REVIEW  By Peter Baker The Great British Rally: RAC to Rally GB – The Complete Story Winter in the early 1900s, even in Torquay, was traditionally a quiet time for hotels and restaurants, most putting the shutters up at the end of the season, reopening only when the next year’s first cuckoo appeared. In fact, it’s fair to say, the whole country west of Bournemouth t...

CLICK HERE – Discount code: RETRO10 BOOK REVIEW  By Peter Baker Coachbuilt Cars: Jaguar XK 120 Supersonic by Ghia Futuristic, daring, very quick, and very Italian, is the best way the to describe the Jaguar XK 120 Supersonic by Ghia, surely one of motoring’s greatest classics. That it also heads up this new series ‘Coachbuilt Cars’ published by Porter Press Int...

BOOK REVIEW  By Peter Baker The Ford That Beat Ferrari – A Racing History of the GT40. Third Edition. Exhaustive. It is quite probable that this book relaunch has been timed to coincide with Ford v Ferrari, a 20th Century Fox all-action film about to do the rounds, starring Matt Damon and Christian Bale. With this in mind, enthusiasts wanting a glitzy blow-by-blow, hour-by-hour acc...

BOOK REVIEW  By Peter Baker  The MGC GTS Lightweights - Abingdon’s Last Racers  Pure evolution, these factory competition cars can trace their roots back to the original MGB, a car born in an era when the Company was enjoying record sports car sales around the world. Sadly, the GTS, based on the unpopular six-cylinder version, represented something of a swan song for the br...

BOOK REVIEW  By Peter Baker Ultimate: John Fitzpatrick Group C Porsches – The Definitive History  Another quality production from Porter Press International, this very desirable 320-page single volume work, dedicated to John Fitzpatrick and his Group C racing activities, is extremely well crafted by Mark Cole and restricted to just 750 copies. Exclusive, although not cheap at &p...

BOOK REVIEW  By Peter Baker  Driven: an elegy to cars, roads and motorsports  Interesting, but no more than a that. This is a 272-page paperback that looks back on selected motor sport events attended by the author. Unfortunately, the text is sub-sized, difficult to read and the book is bereft of pictures. That said, it has just enough good bits to make the cut, i.e. I enjoyed th...

BOOK REVIEW  By Peter Baker  ‘Mr Big Healey’: The Official Biography of John Chatham  How the autobiography of Mr. Chatham can be compressed into just 160 pages is beyond me. His escapades during the London-Mexico Rally alone being enough in entertainment to outdo even War and Peace. Born in 1940 into a garage-owning family guaranteed John’s career would revolve ...

BOOK REVIEW  By Peter Baker 1970-75 Formula 1 Greats – Lotus 72 To me, 1970 seems like just yesterday. I was still coming to terms with losing my hero, Jim Clark, even though he had died at Hockenheim some two years earlier. Motor racing was more basic then, a lot of design risk took place on the back of a cigarette packet and, as a result, race cars were sometimes expected to crash...