Race Legends - The Blog

New Phil Hill Book

 The new book Phil Hill: A Driving Life arrived today from our friends at the Motorsport Collector.

It's a compilation of articles written by Phil for Road & Track magazine. The articles are arranged chronologically by the specific vehicles that are covered. The contemporary photography is by John Lamm, with period photos from a range of archives, including that of Phil personally.

The book is actually larger than I expected at 13 by 11 inches. The design is by Chuck Queener. It is stunning and the photographic reproduction is truly excellent.

The contents, well what can one say? I don't think a vehicle or mechanical device was ever mentioned around Phil without him demonstrating an encyclopedic knowledge about it. It's bittersweet for me to read because it brings back memories of Phil and what a truly special person he was, in so many ways.

Buy the book. You won't regret it.

New Corvette Racing Books

Over the weekend of June 27 & 28, I worked the Mecum auction held in conjunction with the Bloomington Gold Corvettes show. I picked up two new (to me at least) books about Corvette racing. The first is Corvette Racing Legends: The Story of the L-88 Option Package by Dr. Peter Gimenez (available at the Ventura Publishing web site) and David Friedman's Corvette Thunder: Fifty Years of Corvette Racing, 1953-2003 (available at the Gulstrand web site).

Both books are large format and jam-packed with photos and informative captions. The Friendman book was published in conjunction with Corvette racing legend Dick Gulstrand, who was on hand to sign the book.

If you are interested in Corvettes or American sports car racing and history, these both are a "must have" for your library.

Fabulous Book on Engines

I've just finished a fabulous book entitled Development of Piston Aero Engines by Bill Gunston. It's really a fabulous book for anyone truly interested in the underlying technology of piston engines. The fact that this focuses on aircraft powerplants shouldn't scare you off. It's a great guide to the basics of 2 and 4 cycle internal combustion engines, with some discussion of diesels as well. The first chapters focus on the fundamentals of internal combustion and  then reviews the development of a wide-range of aircraft engines up to the present day. My interest rather dropped off once the 1950s passed as the big inline and radial engines captured my attention.