Car Dork Book Club

I don't know if this has been done in the past here on F-Chat, but I just read a great motor sports book and I thought I would share the title and see if anyone else had anything to recommend.

To start, I just finished reading A.J. Baime's terrific "Go Like Hell." It's about the battle for LeMans dominance between Enzo Ferrari and Henry Ford II in the early to mid-1960's. Not only is this a compelling tale, but the book is really well written. Even if you know close to nothing about cars or racing, you can sink your teeth into the story of the personalities and the monumental effort that it took Ford to create and win with the GT40 against the amazingly durable and nimble Ferrari prototypes of the era. You get a great dose of Carroll Shelby, and John Surtees gets a lot of deserved attention.

While I'm at it I will throw in a pitch for Mark Donohue's "The Unfair Advantage." If you haven't read it, just run right out and get it right now. I'm not kidding. Go. Now. It's awesome. If you really want to understand what turns a car into a winner, there's your book.

Next, "Il Cavallino Nel Cuore" ("The Horse in the Heart") by the designer of your 3x8, Leonardo Fioravanti. Lots of drawing board sketches and concepts of some truly amazing cars. It's a lovely book, but written by a designer, not a writer, and then translated in a bit of a stilted way. Still worth having if you are want a look at the life that brought you the 3x8.

Finally, a book I haven't read but one that sounds pretty intriguing: "Enzo Ferrari: Power, Politics and the Making of an Automobile Empire" by Luca Dal Monte. This was written up in Tim Suddard's column in the new issue of Classic Motorsports Magazine. There seem to be a ton of Enzo books out there, but the way Tim puts it, this seems to be the definitive story. It's on my Amazon list and my birthday isn't far away, so that's a hint.

Bonus item: There was a great profile of Enzo in a January 1966 issue of The New Yorker Magazine. If you are a subscriber you can download it for free and it's worth a read to see how the man was regarded in his own time.

So that's my little list. What are you reading that would be interesting to the rest of us?

 

Finished A.J. Baime's "Arsenal of Democracy" about Ford and their role in building the B-24 Liberator heavy bomber during WW2. Amazing story that will make you shake your head (even harder) when you think about today's politics.

Next up is Charles Sorenson's memoir "My Forty Years at Ford." I seem to have a taken a detour to Dearborn, but I have the massive new Enzo biography waiting in the wings.