Sports car stocking fillers

Two fine examples of auto porn have come across the TotallyMotor desk just in time for Christmas. They are Sports Cars by James Mann and 365 Sports Cars You Must Drive, by John Lamm.

Sports Cars features a bold yellow Porsche on the cover and it quite simply shows off 55 examples of sports cars in chronological order, starting with vintage sports cars and then taking us through the golden age of the 50s, the classics of the 60s, the enthusiasts’ cars of the 70s, 80s and 90s and finally the 21st Century sports cars. 

It’s the kind of book that is good for starting a debate. Is the Mazda MX-5 a proper sports car or a hairdresser’s motor? Does a smart car have any business being in a book of sports cars even if it is a roadster? Why are there no Maseratis in this book? Is the Lamborghini Countach conspicuous by its absence?

The book is an easy read, it’s peppered with little facts throughout and while a bit more humour would give it a lift, there’s still plenty to smile at in this book - especially the pictures of old classics that are still on the road such as the old Bentley blower.

365 Sports Cars You Must Drive sounds more like an awesome challenge than a serious book title - and what a year it would be if you managed to get behind the wheel of everything from the Ferrari Testarossa to the Fisker Karma to the bizarre Geely Gleagle, which will most likely require a trip to China to drive.

Making this book user-friendly is the fact that the book is arranged in alphabetical order so you can easily look up any car that springs to mind. It’s pretty darn comprehensive with the obvious entries, such as the Porsche 550 Spyder, AKA the car that killed James Dean, as well as cars that are a tad more esoteric, such as the 1923 Voisin, an aluminium-bodied beast from France and one of the world’s first examples of the monocoque body. Plenty there for serious car nerds as well as casual observers.

With Christmas just around the corner and Amazon still squeezing in last-minute festive season orders, these two books could be great stocking fillers - or you might just want to keep them for yourself.

By Georgia Lewis

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