Vintage American Road Racing Cars 1950–1970, by Harold W. Pace and Mark R. Brinker, 2004 ISBN 0–7603– 1783–6 Hardcover, 304 pages. Motor-books International, St. Paul, MN $60

It’s exceedingly difficult for me to understand how a book so wonderfully comprehensive can be so very entertaining. How could such a book crammed with hard facts and cold figures and exact measurements be such a magic carpet ride back to the halcyon days of American road racing? I’ll just answer my own question if you don’t mind: “Let Harold Pace and Mark Brinker loose to research and write Vintage American Road Racing Cars 1950–1970 and you have a real masterwork.”

This great new book, which took this pair just over a year to write, is just a sheer joy to leaf through. Within its 304 pages the reader will be reminded of (or introduced to) the days of American racing when average people (all with their passion gauges pegged) dreamed, designed, engineered, scrounged, built and raced their own creations.

You’ve heard of many of the protagonists the likes of Shelby, Gurney, Kurtis, Arciero, Reventlow, Penske and Hall—they’re all here—but there are over 500 more in here! Names and machines, each with a story, each with a reason, each a part of the grand tapestry. Read it straight through (one guess on who did that), or pick it up a page at a time; either way you’ll never cease to be spellbound by the facts of the matter.

Brightly written, accurate, articulate, this large-scale book is totally unstuffy and (as you must have gathered by now) eminently readable. To say the book is “well illustrated” might be a click or two too weak. This book is chock-full of great photos that put flesh and bones on the memories of a wonderfully diverse group of North American road racing cars.

These are the true tales of machines that were mostly hand made because their makers had a better idea of how it should be done. Of particular interest are the mini-interviews that this book is seasoned with. The authors tracked down many of the men who built the cars and asked them some of the questions that we all would like to know. The results are insightful and now (thanks to Hal P. and Doc B.) part of the permanent record. These notes personalize and humanize the book and it’s heroes all that much more.

As for the photos that we mentioned earlier, these are the shots of the greats: Kuhn, Friedman, Lyons (both Pete and father, Ozzie), Batchelor, Tron-lone and other shooters of the day, all carefully chosen and crisply presented on page after page. Augmenting those acknowledged masters’ lenswork is the modern day photography of author Harold Pace, whose work is very much in keeping with the standards set by the above names.

Adding to the flavor of this multi-layered text are a number of period advertisements clipped from the magazines and brochures of the day. Each recalls those wonderfully innocent yesterdays when a young fellow could dream about finding a wrecked TR-4 for peanuts, strip the coachwork off and strap a $295 Devin body on it to come up with his own homebuilt Ferrari Mondial. Or perhaps bolt a Judson or Shorrock supercharger on his MGA to give it wings. The ads are more than nostalgic; they add to the ambiance and reflect the sense of the era when average people could build their own racing cars.

From an SAH member’s point of view, the indexes may well be the most valuable part of this book. In fact, I foresee many of our more studious members reading this book back-to-front because of the way that these authors have cataloged the rosters of these machines by year of construction, constructor, body builder, power plant and racing class. While we’re at it, the bibliography in and of itself is something of a treasure trove for SAH members who are interested in this era. It exposes the strong underpinnings of this work and offers a multitude of jumping-off points for further individual research and study.

This book is an exceedingly accurate “reverse roadmap” to a time when so many of us were simply having far too much fun to pay really close attention. How would I know that the clapped-out Dane Formula 3 car that I bought for $650 was the ONLY one that Stu Dane ever built. (It’s now on a wall in a paint store in Arizona, Hal).

From Aardvark to Zink, with Scarab, McKee, Beach, Morgensen, LeGrand, Pink Elephant, Chapparal, Eisert, Reynolds Wrap-Zerex-Paper Mache Specials, Zeitler, Genie, Begra, Devin, Dane, Dolphin, Eagle, Kellison, Tatum, Turner, Echidna, Monsterati, Platypus, Thundermug, Jomar, Bangert and Bobsy in between; this is truly a work of love, great effort and amazing scholarship.

• Doug Stokes