Customer Reviews

American Sports Car Racing in the 1950s

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When my book "American Racing ~ Road Racing In The 50s and 60s" was published I was deluged by calls from the West coast. Everybody wanted to know, "When are you going to do a book about West coast racing." I had to tell them I never photographed over there.

Well here it is "American Sports Car Racing in the 1950s" by Michael Lynch. And it is a winner! I learned things about the racing scene on the left coast that boggled my mind.

Michael Lynch's words hooked me and I could not put the book down. He owes a couple of nights sleep!

"American Sports Car Racing in the 1950s" is the perfect companion to my book.

I highly recommend it. Buy it today.

Tom Burnside

I was there at St Jo and Elkhart and Sebring and the airport circuits in the Midwest and this book is awash in memories. The pictures are perfect for bringing back the cars and the people that as a teenager I worshiped...remembering the ride with neighbor Masten in the Allard to the Leawood drug store on snowy streets to buy the lone copy of Road & Track. We didn't have California, but the trickle down was pretty good...Denise at Meadowdale, Hall in Kansas, Bunker and Katskee and the rest. I sold my '32 Ford for an MG and never looked back...American Sports Car racing as I recall and Lynch describes formed a life long love for the era and the cars...as I read now sitting in my '54 Morgan in my garage with a can of Schlitz. This book is a keeper.

This book covers the events that dominated the early years of my life. I felt being a part of the timing and scoring team with the Long Beach MG Club gave me an insiders look at all the happenings but after reading the book I see there were a lot of things I didn't realize. It was a facinating look back at racing when it was still fun. Looking at the pictures makes you realize these guys were the real super-heros. Five inch wide tires racing at tracks literally line with trees and telehone poles all graphically covered in this book! I'm waiting for volume II !!

I was there during this era, as the wife of a driver, as a licensed flagman and while I thought this book made a heroic effort to cover this very exciting time I thought it missed the true uniqueness of the era which was the beauty of the people and the mystery of the machines. This book spends a lot of time talking in depth about a few people, one of the author's brothers for example. It is really not so much about American racing as it is about California racing - lines saying that Sports car racing (even Vintage car racing) may have begun in the Northeast but came to maturity in California give evidence to the bias toward covering this era with a definite prejudice toward certain people and certain geography. Like a previous reader, I too would like to see Volumn II perhaps the authors can cover the era with more of an eye to history and less self interest. However, to their credit these authors have assembled a tremendous number of interesting photos and despite the wordiness of the text much fascinating data.