Customer Reviews

Silver Arrows In Camera: A photographic history of the Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union Racing Teams 1934-39

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I am not a particular fan of open-wheel and single-seat racing, finding it womewhat less relevant to the automobile than the sports-racing cars although this is certainly arbitrary as even the latter are not really representative of the family sedan.
Notwithstanding, I cannot get enough of this book. It is lavishly illustrated with a huge number of photos, even some rare period color photos. Not only does the book reflect a hugely significant era in motor-racing history, but also many views of a Europe which no longer exists, destroyed by the very sponsors of the racing marques featured in this book.
Ferrari may be the rapier of racing, and certaily Bugatti is the ballerina, but no one with even the slightest bit of benzene in his or her soul can avoid appreciating these magnificent pieces of engineering excess from Mercedes Benz and Auto Union. This is a book that will keep your focus for months with its wealth of detail, amazing photos, and outstanding text. Highly recommended, a must have for every racing enthusiast and sure to become a classic.

I recently got a copy via a British Amazon source,and I am well pleased.
I am impressed with the wealth of "new" photos,which complement the other available works on the Siberpfeile,both in and out of print.
Especially welcome is the converage of the seldom seen 1936 version of the Mercedes W25,and the composite Typ C-D Auto Union from the 1938 season.All the better known versions are covered in depth as well.
Only flaw,and I find it irritating in such a beautiful book,are a number of caption errors,misidentifing cars,times,and places.
There are a couple of fantastic shots of a Mercedes chassis,but they are of the W 154,not the W125 as noted.I also found the authors repeated comments on Neubauers waistline size to be a distraction.Hey,he WAS the forefather of the modern racing team concept,let's see something more positive about him!
The book is still quite hard to put down,and draws the enthusiast back to it again and again,just to absorb this wonderful record.
My wish is that the author/editors will offer errata sheets with corrected captioning;this will turn a good book into a great one to stand beside Chris Nixon's works on the greatest era of motorsport ever known.

Hard to believe the author could dig up unpublished photos after 70 years - but he did, including some excellent VINTAGE COLOR PHOTOGRAPHS by Louis Klementaski. Well-chosen selection of both well-known photos as well as unpublished pieces. Utilized both the Mercedes and Audi archives, as well as LAT and all are beautifully reproduced. Light on text but has lengthy, detailed captions - the perfect companion to Chris Nixon's Racing the Silver Arrows - Anthony Pritchard has done a stand-up job and this is reinforced by Octane magazine choosing this as Book of the Month.

This book delivers more than its subtitle promises! Not only is this book an excellent source of period photography, it also contains a thorough textual treatment in the form of extensive photo captions as well as contextual narrative. That said, the book does keep a narrow focus on the car-specific aspects of the story, which, considering that the history of Germany's Auto Union and Mercedes-Benz Silver Arrow cars of that era is utterly inseparable from the political context of the time, is a useful qualifier to keep in mind. Put another way, the story of Nazi Germany, Hitler's fascination with cars in general and motorsport in particular, state subsidies, the propaganda value of victorious racing efforts, political pressure exerted on manufacturers, or cronyism are referenced where they materially affect the competition history of the cars but the book neither dwells on these matters nor attempts to unravel the many, often unholy, alliances.

That Pritchard has a mind for details is evident already in his Author's Notes in which he explains his reasons for using a specific nomenclature in listing the cars, and the predicament posed to photo identification (and there are some questionable cases) by, often, race numbers being changed between practice and race. Early on he also addresses the merits of the "official" story of how the cars came to be silver, not white. (Spoiler alert: the issue remains unresolved--and this finding is as state-of-the-art as it gets because Daimler-Chrysler held a symposium on just that subject in 2007, the year before this book was published.)

It boggles the mind that 70 years after the fact never before seen photos should still be lurking in archives but they do. Most importantly, this book shows, likely for the first time, a selection of 13 COLOR photos by that grand photographer Louis Klemantaski, a rarity for the time and especially this photographer.

Closing chapters contain brief bios of varying length of each marque's drivers accompanied by a period photo, and remarks about the post-1945 years that address specials, the post-1950 resumption of German racing efforts, and DKW passenger cars. Appended are Silver Arrows survivors by chassis no. and whereabouts, detailed specs, a VERY useful description of the 1906-51 GP formulae (the latter year mistakenly called "1946" in the Table of Contents). Bibliography; Index divided by vehicles/teams, people, and races.

Full review at <[...]>. Copyright 2010, Sabu Advani