Book Review: Sports Car Racing In Camera, 1950-59 by Paul Parker

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

A proper coffee-table car book ought to be heavy on the grainy action photos, light on the words, and include photographs of Škoda 1101 Sports and Renault 4CVs at Le Mans. Sports Car Racing In Camera, 1950-59 qualifies for inclusion in even the most crowded coffee-table real estate.

Normally, I give review copies away after I’m done with them, lest I run out of shelf space for my collection of Nixon biographies and Emile Zola novels, but this one is a keeper. In fact, this shot of Ak Miller from the 1954 Carrera Panamericana is going to be sliced out, framed, and hung on my office wall.

The book is broken down by year, with a chapter for each year of the 1950s and a breakdown of teams, drivers, and results for each year. Unsurprisingly, most of the photographs were shot at European events, though we do get a few from Sebring and other New World events. Here’s Jack Fairman behind the wheel of an XK120 at Dundrod in 1951.

Porfirio Rubirosa digging his car out of a ditch!

Those who enjoy drooling over photos of 1950s Ferraris and Maseratis will find their Italian car-porn needs amply satisfied with this book; there’s even something for the Osca aficionados.

This is a Haynes book, written by a Brit for the British market, which means that some of the photo captions contain near-disturbing levels of attention to detail. You’ll also get some double-take-inducing Anglocryptic turns of phrase, e.g., “…their dominance was interrupted by Jean Behra’s Gordini biffing Tony Rolt’s D Type up the bum at Thillois on lap 21.” Biffing up the bum! No matter— I’ll take this over the “Go Dog Go” style I slog through in some of the drag-racing books I won’t be reviewing.

This fine book earns a Four Rod Rating (out of a possible OM615-grade five). Murilee says check it out!

Sports Car Racing In Camera, 1950-59 by Paul Parker








Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.

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  • Rpn453 Rpn453 on Feb 13, 2011
    No matter— I’ll take this over the “Go Dog Go” style I slog through in some of the drag-racing books I won’t be reviewing. That line made me laugh. My buddy always has magazines like that on his coffee table, and I usually end up reading passages out loud to him for my own amusement.
  • Clive Most 400 series highways in Canada were designed for 70 MPH using 70 year old cars. The modern cars brake, handle, ride better, and have much better tyres. If people would leave a 2-3 second gap and move to the right when cruising leaving the passing lanes open there would be much better traffic flow. The 401 was designed for a certain amount of traffic units; somewhere in the 300,000 range (1 car = 1 unit 1 semi+trailer =4 units) and was over the limit a few minutes after the 1964 official opening. What most places really need is better transit systems and better city designs to reduce the need for vehicle travel.
  • Kira Interesting article but you guys obviously are in desperate need of an editor and I’d be happy to do the job. Keep in mind that automotive companies continually patent new technologies they’ve researched yet have no intention of developing at the time. Part of it is to defend against competitors, some is a “just in case” measure, and some is to pad resumes of the engineers.
  • Jalop1991 Eh?
  • EBFlex Wow Canada actually doing something decent for a change. What a concept.
  • 3-On-The-Tree To Khory, I was a firefighter as well and the worst thing about car fires was the fumes from all the plastics and rubber, tires etc.
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