Books are another story. Some books are trustworthy, others are drivel. If you are into drag racing, there has never been more available, but lot of it is not very well researched. The books even rehash mistakes other books have made, which is the reason for the morgue in the first place; go back to the source to verify it. Books can also be expensive purchases, and, in today’s marketplace, there is a lot of stuff to choose from, so it is a good idea to read a bit if possible before laying the cash down. One that I use a lot is the recently updated version of Musclecar Chronicle ($29.95) by the Consumer Guide people, which is pretty general but has a lot of solid basic info. Tom Shaw and others helped get the research mistakes from the first edition (today a pretty rare volume) corrected before it went to press.
So, I am always looking for good books. One that Motorbooks released is by Joe Oldham, who did a lot of musclecar era testing back in the day for the aforementioned Marty Schoor. Oldham, who was also editor-in-chief at Popular Mechanics for many years, wrote Muscle Car Confidential as a retrospective of the times coupled with images from back in the day. Using language more in line with the New York street set, he talks about the cars he thrashed, including Mopars, on the track and from curbside with the pretenders. The cool thing is, he also explains the stories behind some of the articles.
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If you like cars in general, there are some good deals out there in books. Until just a couple of weeks ago, the Society of Automotive Engineers was blowing out copies of Carl Breer’s The Birth of Chrysler, which discussed the beginnings of the engineering prowess that made the company so famous, for 5.00 each. Still available as of this writing was the second revised edition of Griff Borgeson’s The Golden Age of the American Racing Car, an excellent and complete look at the earliest years of the open wheel racing, including the board track era, also at $5.00 for the hardbound edition (they won’t last long). The best board track book remains the $100.00 Board Track Guts, Gold & Glory by Dick Wallen; 130 mph on 1920s is glory and death. At 434 pages, it is probably one of the nicest books I have ever owned.
Anyway, that’s what gets a book geek excited. Now, we could start talking about old postcards, too…but that might be a little much for one month. Of course, if it’s the Sox & Martin Paper Tiger altered wheelbase Plymouth from 1965, that may be of some interest. If I can dig it out of the stacks….
Stunkard can be found here at MoparMax once a month, or all the time over at www.quartermilestones.com.
