Car Fever

Car Fever
Author: James May
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2009-08-20
Genre: Humor
ISBN: 1848942265

Top Gear's James May is back with his hilarious and controversial opinions on . . . just about everything. As well as writing about his first love, cars, James has a go at political correctness, the endless rules and regulations of daily life, the internal combustion engine and traffic wardens. He discusses gastropubs, Jeremy Clarkson and other trials of modern life. His highly entertaining observations from behind the wheel will have you laughing out loud, whether you share his opinions, or not. Car Fever is an indispensable guide to life for the modern driver.

Funny Car Fever

Funny Car Fever
Author: Steve Reyes
Publisher: Cartech
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2007
Genre: Funny cars
ISBN: 9781932494433

There wasn't always a class for these "funny-looking" cars. In the mid 1960s, many of drag racing's fastest drivers were outgrowing the Super Stock and Factory Experimental classes, building cars that stretched and eventually broke the rules. Promoters discovered they could pair up these altered-wheelbase, injected, blown machines in exhibition match races--and the spectators came running. Rivalries were born, the Funny Car class was created, and the cars kept getting faster and faster. Funny Car Fever is a humorous, heart-felt, first-hand account of the most exciting and memorable years of the Funny Car class. Steve Reyes followed these fiberglass-bodied, nitro burning machines and their drivers from the years leading up to the creation of the Funny Car class through its halcyon days. He's included over 350 of his favorite images and more than a few never-before-heard stories to bring the feeling of the class and the era home to you.

Drag Race Fever

Drag Race Fever
Author: Grady Bryant
Publisher: Createspace Independent Pub
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2012-10-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781477655276

Legendary drag racer and fiction writer Grady Bryant has released his latest book, Drag Race Fever. It was only a matter of time before Grady shared his adventures of the early days of drag racing in a story that all sports and drag racers will enjoy. The story involves a young man getting started in drag racing in the early 1960's when the factory experimental race cars were the top calling cards of all drag race promoters. These cars were the first Funny Cars of today. Read how these racers evolved into the cars we see today and learn how driver Johnny Rock and his mechanic Clutch Roberts toured the states pulling their race car to the next match race, continuously sacrificing so their car would have the parts to race again. Although the story is fiction any drag race fan can fit different names to the drivers and relate to all the accounts of living on the road and racing every Saturday and Sunday at different tracks across the nation.

Ferrari Fever

Ferrari Fever
Author: Marc Sonnery
Publisher:
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2014-01-31
Genre:
ISBN: 9780957397828

Ferrari Fever is a fascinating and nostalgic look back at the classic car collecting scene in the 60's and 70's, an era when some of the rarest and most interesting Italian automobiles could still be found hidden or languishing in barns, junkyards or by the side of the road...almost lost in time. Paul Schouwenburg s story begins in wartime occupied Amsterdam, a poignant backdrop to the hardships of the years to follow, when the appearance of any exotic Italian thoroughbred was a rare sight indeed. Fuelled by a fascination for all things mechanical, adventures on a Rudge bicycle and early experiences in his parents succession of Rovers, Paul gains a burning passion for finding, restoring, and ultimately racing Italian cars. But these were not just any Italian cars -from the early 60s onwards, he begins to uncover several rare Alfas, from 1900CSS Zagato to Tipo 33/2, in addition to a host of very special Ferraris, including a 250GTO, 340 America Touring, 250 MM Vignale Berlinetta, 250GT SWB Competition/61 and 275GTB/C/LM, usually by word of mouth or tenuous rumour. Having acquired them, often many different models at a time, he would drive them home across Europe through snow storms, and restore them single-handedly in his spare time, full-time job as a world-leading head and neck cancer surgeon permitting! If that wasn t exciting enough, he would then race them, often winning, before moving on to the next irresistible project. Filled with rich anecdotes and rare insights into the colourful characters of the day, including Jacques Swaters and Rob de la Rive Box, Paul s passion and incredible drive make for exciting reading. Indeed this is a unique take, a look in the rear view mirror at a bygone era when gems could be found incredibly cheaply and enthusiasts took seat-of-the-pants decisions regarding many aspects of a hobby which was uncharted, innocent and simply not as commercial as today he couldn t even give away his 250 GTO at the time!

Southern California Funny Cars

Southern California Funny Cars
Author: Steve Reyes
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2023-06-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 146710972X

Southern California was the birthplace of organized drag racing, with the first organized race held at the Santa Ana airport in 1949 and the subsequent founding of the National Hot Rod Association in 1950. Over the next decade and a half, the dragster became the king of the quarter mile on Southern California drag strips. In 1964, veteran dragster owner/driver Jack Chrisman had an idea for something different to grace Southern California's drag strips. It was not a dragster but a stock-bodied race car using nitromethane for fuel in a supercharged engine. With the help of Gene Mooneyham, Mercury's Fran Hernandez, and sponsor Helen Sachs, Chrisman put together the world's first nitro-burning "funny car." It was a steel stock-bodied Mercury Cyclone with a supercharged 427 Ford engine running on pure nitromethane. Chrisman started the evolution that soon turned stock steel-bodied cars into fiberglass-bodied tube chassis funny cars. Southern California drag racers began to lead the way for racers all over the United States in the new funny car class.

Fever Dream

Fever Dream
Author: Samanta Schweblin
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2017-01-10
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0399184619

“A wonderful nightmare of a book: tender and frightening, disturbing but compassionate. Fever Dream is a triumph of Schweblin’s outlandish imagination.” –Juan Gabriel Vasquez, author of The Sound of Things Falling and Reputations A young woman named Amanda lies dying in a rural hospital clinic. A boy named David sits beside her. She’s not his mother. He's not her child. Together, they tell a haunting story of broken souls, toxins, and the power and desperation of family. Fever Dream is a nightmare come to life, a ghost story for the real world, a love story and a cautionary tale. One of the freshest new voices to come out of the Spanish language and translated into English for the first time, Samanta Schweblin creates an aura of strange psychological menace and otherworldly reality in this absorbing, unsettling, taut novel.

Road Fever

Road Fever
Author: Tim Cahill
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 407
Release: 2011-11-30
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 0307809374

Tim Cahill reports on the road trip to end all road trips: a journey that took him from Tierra del Fuego to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, in a record-breaking twenty three and a half days.

Wandering Time

Wandering Time
Author: Luis Alberto Urrea
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 146
Release: 1999-01-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780816518661

Fleeing a failed marriage and haunted by ghosts of his past, Luis Alberto Urrea jumped into his car several years ago and headed west. Driving cross-country with a cat named Rest Stop, Urrea wandered the West from one year's Spring through the next. Hiking into aspen forests where leaves "shiver and tinkle like bells" and poking alongside creeks in the Rockies, he sought solace and wisdom. In the forested mountains he learned not only the names of trees—he learned how to live. As nature opened Urrea's eyes, writing opened his heart. In journal entries that sparkle with discovery, Urrea ruminates on music, poetry, and the landscape. With wonder and spontaneity, he relates tales of marmots, geese, bears, and fellow travelers. He makes readers feel mountain air "so crisp you feel you could crunch it in your mouth" and reminds us all to experience the magic and healing of small gestures, ordinary people, and common creatures. Urrea has been heralded as one of the most talented writers of his generation. In poems, novels, and nonfiction, he has explored issues of family, race, language, and poverty with candor, compassion, and often astonishing power. Wandering Time offers his most intimate work to date, a luminous account of his own search for healing and redemption.

Collecting Drag Racing Model Kits

Collecting Drag Racing Model Kits
Author: Tom Boyd
Publisher: CarTech Inc
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2020-08-15
Genre: Transportation
ISBN: 1613255659

Relive the golden age of drag racing through this exhaustive volume covering the best drag racing model kits of the era. Model expert Tim Boyd, author of Collecting Muscle Car Model Kits, turned his attention to the fantastic drag racing model kits available from the late 1950s through today. Some racing model kits were actually 3-in-1 kits, where the builder assembled the drag-race version of the car in lieu of the street or custom version. Boyd starts by covering the options, collectability, variety, availability, and value of these wonderful kits, and then concentrates on the highly detailed drag racing-only kits that became available starting in the mid-1960s through today. He also shows the differences between original kits, older reproduction kits, and new reproduction kits that many enthusiasts find at swap meets and online sources today. Many of these great kits were from the 1960s, an era when building model kits was a widely popular, serious hobby, similar to video games today. Not only was it fun to build the kits but it was also a great way to learn about all the different race classes and categories because there wasn’t regular TV or online coverage during that era. The artwork on those kits was fantastic, and many collectors today seek original kits largely because of it. The classes of racing covered are Gassers, Rail Dragsters, Stocks and Super Stocks, Funny Cars, Pro Stocks, Exhibition Racers, and more. Drag racing cars designed by model companies that never actually existed are also covered. Nostalgia drags are some of the most popular events around the country today. People can’t get enough of these old race cars that were built in an era when variety, innovation and home building ruled the day. This book is great for modelers in general, model-kit collectors, and drag-racing fans young and old alike.