Books: The Rolls-Royce Motor Car and the Bentley Since 1931 + The Hemi in the Barn

By Gunnar Heinrich | IMG B.T. Batsford via Amazon

AUTOMOTIVE books are, typically, dreadful.

They range from dry if vague accounts of various models through the years (replete with stock photos that inspire no one) to one man’s ill worded diatribe on why the Continental should rightfully transplant the Town Car in the annals of Lincoln’s last forty years and… you get the idea.

Deadly dull.

This Christmas, I’ve received two books that might just buck the trend.

The first: The Rolls-Royce Motor Car and the Bentley since 1931 6th Ed. by Anthony Bird, Ian Hallows, and Brendan James, published by B.T. Batsford.

Four hundred thirty two pages – it is, as you might guess, an historical review of the marque’s engineering progress; worded in a fairly patrician argot.

Ex. 1, p. 55, ph. 3

The arrangement worked to a nicety; not only was the 40/50 Rolls-Royce exceptionally economical by the standards of its day, but it was able to accelerate smoothly from 3 to 60 m.p.h. in top gear without hesitation or spluttering.

What makes The Rolls-Royce Motor Car worthy of your buck, loonie, or quid (as listed on the inside cover) is that The Rolls-Royce Motor Car is really thorough, covers every model up to 2002, and most important – it’s pretty.

All photos – including more contemporary pics – are in black and white. The serif text, the sleek cover photo, makes this book such a lovely reference to Rolls-Royce and Bentley’s past. A fittingly fine addition to anyone’s automotive library.

The second: The Hemi in the Barn: More Great Stories of Automotive Archaelogy by Tom Cotter, forewarded by Jay Leno; publishedby MotorBooks.

Mr. Cotter employs a unique concept just in the title – that cars have been part of the human story long enough for us to consider barn finds as a small niche of human archaelogy. In 39 stories he takes us through, in grounded, basic language, how so ‘n so found such’n such a car in some barn somewhere.

Ex. 2, p. 105, ph. 1

Japanese cars from the 1970s are known as rust buckets. The metal on these cars was thin and rust-proofing was nonexistent. When rust invades a Datsun, Toyota, or Honda from that era, it’s usually beyond fixing. Unless it’s an old race car [...]

Mr. Cotter reminds us that cars and their stories are really about people. We can get so fixed on the cars themselves (the engineering, styling, etc.) that we can lose focus on that facts that cars are the fruits of man’s labors and creativity.S

So, for human interest: The Hemi in the Barn and for love of engineering: The Rolls-Royce Motor Car.