Customer Reviews

LeMans: The Porsche & Peugeot Years 1992-1999

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By this point, I've bought so many Brooklands Books volumes, I should probably own stock in the company! I rate them all 5 stars for content, although I sure wish they would print more color photos. Some of the more recent of the Brooklands series (though not the Le Mans series, sadly) do have mostly color photos, which is very promising.

The Le Mans series is particularly fascinating because many of these European articles would be virtually impossible to find in the US, and even then, they wouldn't be assembled in one bound edition. At the start of this volume, the mighty '80s Group C turbo legacy was coming to a close. The New Order of the day was what amounted to thinly disguised Formula 1 chassis with slightly detuned, yet still highly stressed, high revving, normally aspirated F1 engines. This worked well in theory for faster-than-ever quali laps thanks to the insane cornering speeds and the chicanes that shortened the 4 mile Mulsanne Straight, making ultimate top speed less important, but the high strung engines had major problems lasting 24 hours. Not surprising since full spec F1 engines are designed for 2 hour sprints, so slightly detuning them from 750 down to 650 HP and reducing revs from 15,000 to 13,000 rpm was apparently not enough.

The next step was the emergence of a more GT-based top class rather than a "Super" class such as Group C. Road based cars such as the McLaren F1, Porsche GT1, Ferrari F40LM, Jaguar XJ220LM, Bugatti EB110LM, etc, were suddenly competing at the front. This is great stuff for supercar fans, because you can learn about the improvements made to turn these supercars into very sexy enduro racers. Not surprisingly, these track editions became highly sought after collector's items and once again proved the old adage that "racing improves the breed".

The open top prototype era that followed this period (1999+) was far less interesting to me, partially because those cars were rather dull looking, cookie-cutter creations and were heavily restricted, plus that was an era of Audi dominance without much variation. Only recently, the wicked closed top turbo-diesel Audis and Puegots have made Le Mans interesting to me again...finally!!

Regardless, the entire Brooklands Books Le Mans series is worth owning to any fan. They are very well grouped by era, and you will surely learn things you didn't know after reading them. I bought my first volume knowing my favorite era was the Group C '80s, but ended up with a new appreciation for the other eras as well, especially the Ferrari vs GT40 battles of the '60s and the '70s in general. Good stuff!!