A-Z OF GRAND PRIX CARS



By David Hodges
Published by New Holland.

I lifted this from the start of a Garrison Keillor book that I have been flicking through lately during those odd quiet times, like when I'm waiting for the coffee machine to finish brewing:

"IMPORTANT: Book reading is a solitary and sedentary pursuit, and those who do are cautioned that a book should be used as an integral part of a well-rounded life, including a daily regimen of rigorous physical exercise, rewarding personal relationships, and a sensible low-fat diet. A book should not be used as a substitute for an excuse."

Due to being almost inhumanely busy with the Australian Grand Prix and editorial deadlines, I have had to forsake the 'well-rounded' aspects of living and settle for merely 'a life'.

Spending days on end consumed completely by racing is fun, don't get me wrong, but it's nice to know that, somewhere in the distance, is a chance to go to the gym, cook up something healthy for dinner (rather than living on take-away or food being sold at the circuit) and have a quiet drink with some friends. My girlfriend, who is not remotely interested in motorsport, agreed. Which goes some way to illustrating why, after spending all day and half the night at the office or track, I had a hard time explaining why I had to come home and read a book about... motor sport.

As much as I agree with Keillor's words, I'm not above using reading as a substitute for an excuse just yet. It makes things easier, of course, if you are enjoying what you are reading. And I like 'A-Z of Grand Prix Cars' a lot. The concept of producing a comprehensive reference to every Grand Prix manufacturer in the history of the sport is such a simple one that my first thought was to wonder why such a book only appeared for the first time last year.

When you stop to consider the magnitude of the task, though, I think you go a long way toward finding the answer, particularly when you consider that this volume does not restrict itself to the World Championship era, but goes all the way back to the French Grand Prix of 1906, and all National and International Grands Prix thereafter, providing that the cars were built to whatever the current GP specifications may have been at the time.

Author David Hodges died in 1999, when his efforts were very close to completion, and it fell to Charles Herridge and Graham Robson to put the finishing touches to his work. I'm glad that they did, because the end result is one of the best Grand Prix reference works that I have ever seen.

I didn't stop to count just how many marques are covered in this book; suffice to say that there is an awful lot crammed into the 250-odd, A4-sized pages. It should also be unnecessary to point out that there are a lot of makes here that I had never heard of. Some, obviously, were small and relatively insignificant entrants from the early twentieth century (a good example is the opening entry, Abbot-Detroit, which entered two cars in the 1911 Grand Prize at Savannah, only to have both flagged off for being too slow before they could be classified).

Apparently not content with describing the cars that actually made the field, Hodges expanded his scope to encompass cars that never actually found their way to the starting grid. Never come across an Assegai (an Alfa Romeo-powered South African one-off that failed to qualify for the 1962 Rand GP at Kyalami), a Berta (a mid-1970s Brabham-inspired car whose designer eventually gave up on his GP dreams and focused instead on F5000), a Trebron (a Judd-powered design planned in the early 1990s that was aborted before an example was built), or a Trossi Monaco (an unusual front-wheel-drive machine from 1935 powered by a two-stroke, Zoller-supercharged, aircooled 3982cc engine) before? Well, now you have.

This is fascinating stuff for anyone with more than a passing interest in Grand Prix racing, but for historians, it's the stuff that dreams are made of. But hold on to your pants, because it gets better. Within each entry, every model built by the featured marque is described in chronological order, usually with the designation numbers thrown in for good measure. And the descriptions venture well beyond the standard technical-specification stuff.

Operating within fairly tight space restrictions, Hodges manages to convey a good sense of the ideas behind the cars; the various economic, ideological, strategic, or mechanical forces that drove each project. But tech-heads, don't despair, because all the usual 'engine capacity, power output' type of stuff has been included too. The text is complemented with a good selection of black and white images scattered throughout.

Of course, a lot of the information contained within the book is best understood within the context of the associated regulations, and a useful list of regulation changes between 1906 and 2000 has accordingly been included as an appendix.

Low points? There aren't many. Apart from the odd typo, the only real problem I could find was the author's habit of occasionally referring to drivers by surnames alone. Obviously, if you're reading about Lotus and you come across the name Clark, then it's not a problem, but there were a couple of instances, particularly from the pre-Championship era, that left me scratching my head.

I can't see this book not proving to be immensely useful in coming years. Be it for kicking off a piece of research or digging up trivia to impress your mates in the pub, this is one of the best motor racing reference books to have been released in years.

The author's enthusiasm for the project is communicated through the warmly conversational tone of the text, and this makes an already pleasant reading experience all the more enjoyable. If you are remotely enthusiastic about the history of Grand Prix racing, then at £25.00/USD$39.95 this is a steal.