Cars: Freedom, Style, Sex, Power, Motion, Colour, Everything [Hardcover]

Stephen Bayley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2009

The ultimate car book-a love letter to the most beautiful 86 cars ever manufactured by an award -winning car columnist and important cultural and design critic.
The story of the car is the story of how objects of industry became a medium of artistic expression. Memorials of our tastes, yearnings, and capabilities, these machines have layers of meaning and can (as Henry Ford knew) be read like a book . . if only you know how.
Stephen Bayley, car columnist, design authority and cultural commentator knows how, and in this opinionated volume, presents a spectacular study of achievements in car design. Bayley's 86 favorite designs range from the 1908 Ford Model T, to the 1961 Jaguar E-Type, to the 2003 BMW 5. All presented in chronological order, each automobile also makes a statement about the national character of the country of manufacture.
In addition, hundreds of ravishing photographs (including full-body, interior and detail shots) and an elegant slipcase, make CARS the perfect gift book for all car enthusiasts and design aficionados.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Have you ever heard of a Lincoln Zephyr? Turn to page 42 of this luxurious book, and see for yourself the 1935 model of that extraordinarily styled automobile. Style is what this oversized beauty of a book (which is itself the epitome of style) is all about. Accomplished automotive writer Bayley begins his breathtaking album of stunning black-and-white photographs with the bold statement: "Car design is one of the distinctive, even defining, art forms of the twenty-first century." Further, he argues, car design is "our age's singular contribution to cultural history." Each car [was] selected because it "changed the conventional wisdom, lifted the game, raised the bar" in terms of style... Check out, in particular, the 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz. Wow! American opulence at its most dramatic.

(Brad Hooper, Booklist 2009)

About the Author

Stephen Bayley is one of the world's best known commentators on modern culture. In 1989 he was made a Chevalier de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France's top artistic honor, by the French Minister of Culture. Since 1990 Stephen Bayley has been a design consultant working on imaginative communications projects for Ford, Jaguar, Fiat, Audi and BMW amongst others, and wrote the creative strategy for Mercedes-Benz' advertisements. He has written for Car magazine for the past 25 years. Stephen was awarded PPA Columnist of the Year for his car column in GQ (which ran for about eight years) and he wrote very popular regular car columns for The Daily Telegraph and Management Today. He is also well- known as an outspoken commentator on art and design and contributes regularly to The Times, The Daily Mail, The OBserver, The Los Angeles Times, High Life, as well as many trade and professional publications.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Conran (November 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1840915048
• ISBN-13: 978-1840915044
• Product Dimensions: 2 x 10 x 11.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #228,086 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Tom Wolfe said of Mr. Bayley, "I don't know of anybody with more interesting observations about style, taste and contemporary design."

Stephen Bayley is one of the world's best known and outspoken commentators on modern culture, art and design. He contributes regularly to The Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, The Spectator, The Los Angeles Times, High Life, New Statesman, The Independent, and GQ. Cars are on of his many passions, and he has written extensively on automobiles and automobile design for 25 years for both car companies and numerous publications including Car Magazine. He was awarded PPA Columnist of the Year for his car column in (British) GQ.

As a design consultant his clients include: Ford, Absolut Vodka, Volkswagen, Audi, Foster Associates, BMW, the V&A Museum, among others. Former Chief Executive of the Design Museum, the world's leading museum devoted to contemporary design, he appears frequently on radio and television, and lectures at museums and universities all over the world. His numerous books include Design: Intelligence Made Visible with co-author Terence Conran, published by Conran Octopus.

Mr. Bayley has been a judge at many national and international design competitions, including Campaign Press Awards, RIBA Architectural Awards, The Building Awards, Louis Vuitton Concours d'Elegance at Hurlingham, Cartier Style et Luxe at Goodwood, and the BBC Good Food Awards.

In 1989 he was made a Chevalier de L'Ordre des Arts et Des Lettres, France's top artistic honour, by the French Minister of Culture.

He lives in London.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Style over substance January 23, 2010

By Jonathan Petterson

Format:Hardcover

This is a good book. It's well designed, the monochrome photographs are lovely; the text communicates a persuasive vision of the motor vehicle as an art form. But it is not what Mr Bayley claims it to be: "a book about the 80 or so greatest car designs ever".

This ambitious, not to say presumptuous, statement, is no doubt a deliberate provocation. Mr Bayley knows very well that there are millions of car nuts out here who all have our personal greatest cars lists and many of us could even put together a reasonably good justification for our choices.

What makes his 86 (to be precise) a more definitive list of great cars than mine? He doesn't precisely say. He makes a vague statement about them being ones that "changed conventional wisdom, lifted the game, raised the bar", but he doesn't say how. He's a style guru, so you might think he is talking mainly about design in an artistic sense (rather than engineering), but that is obviously not the case with many of his choices. As he says, the original Toyota Corolla was "plain of aspect and technologically unadventurous".

So it seems he also wishes to take into account standards of manufacture and quality control - where the Corolla did "lift the game" in its market segment.

OK, fair enough, but what are we to make of the NSU Prinz? A fine little car perhaps, even "a jewel"; but in the end just a Fiat 600 with Chevy Corvair styling, built to Volkswagen standards. Not enough, I would argue, to make the cut. And the Volkswagen management agreed when they took over NSU and ended its production!

The book is full of such lost causes and design cul de sacs, including the aforementioned Corvair. But the most egregious example is surely the Nash Metropolitan. The inclusion of this object (I cannot bring myself to call it a car), more than anything else, suggests that Mr Bayley is not to be taken seriously. The only field in which this curious artefact "raised the bar" was parody.

And I haven't even got onto the cars he leaves out. Like, for example, everything between the 1908 Model T Ford and the 1934 Citroen Traction Avant! Now I have to confess that I like many of the cars produced in this period. Clearly Mr Bayley does not. But that is not sufficient excuse to ignore the Lancia Lambda - a car that raised the bar far more emphatically than most of those in the book, including the two, admittedly very beautiful, 1950s Lancias included.

But never mind. If you love cars, buy the book anyway (but only the miniature edition - it isn't good enough to be worth the price of the big version). Then make your own list of the cars you'd like to have seen in it.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent gift for the car lover April 4, 2011

By Ima Shoppher

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I bought this for my dad for Christmas and it was a huge success! My parents have it displayed on their coffee table and look through it often! My dad just loves the details about the cars and the great pictures included. Excellent purchase for the price!

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Popular Cars Coffee Table Book March 22, 2010

By William Mitchell

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I bought this book for my father for christmas, and for my grandfather for his birthday. They both really liked the book. I looked through it some and there are a lot of popular cars that shaped america over the years. The book lists the most memorable car of each year for the past 100 years or so, and somtime a couple of cars for some years. This is a great coffee table peice. This book will definitely stir up a conversation about cars.