Customer Reviews

Standard Catalog of Imported Cars 1946-2002 (Standard Catalog of Imported Cars)

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This book looks superficially like the Standard Catalog books dealing with American cars, but the data is incomplete and the editing is grossly inferior. Just a few of the problems I noticed flipping through a few sections:

They lump model years together into big chunks, when there were substantial differences in models within those years.

Information is incomplete or wrong. Example: I looked here to find an answer to the question, "When did Toyota first build a Celica convertible?" The text refers to one in 1987, but I know for a fact that Toyota built one in 1985! No mention at all.

They have pictures of cars that are never discussed in the text or production statistics. Example: Under Volkswagen, they have several pictures of the Thing, but it is never listed or discussed anywhere in the data or text. (And, they have a seemingly infinite number of pictures of the Beetle, which barely changed over several decades, but there are a number of models of which there are no pictures at all.)

These are just a couple things I remember off the top of my head, writing this review without the book in front of me. I have found lots of other similar omissions and mistakes. I'm sure some of the information is accurate, but how to tell?

And this may be a pet peeve, but the Standard Catalog of American Cars didn't include the Nash Metropolitan, apparently because it was actually built by Austin in England. But the catalog of import cars doesn't include it either, apparently because it was sold by Nash.

After the excellent catalogs of American cars, I had high hopes for this book, and I was sorely disappointed. Hopefully a new edition will fix its shortcomings.

The first edition, edited by James M. Flammang, covered the years 1946-1990. I liked it, and decided to buy the second edition to get the additional years. What a disappointment.

First of all, this is a much more cheaply produced book. It is 1/4 inch thinner than the first edition in spite of being over 200 pages longer.

Journalism rule #1: Spell their name right. The IDIOT who edited this edition took CORRECT information from the first edition and changed it. Yo Mike! Those italian cars are named ALFA Romeo,; this was correct in the first edition. Alfa stands for Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili. You changed it to "ALPHA ROMEO." Perhaps the company moved to Greece while I was looking the other way? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Reading the title page or "About the Author" gives you no hint that anyone other than Mike Covello had a hand the creation of this book. Not only is the original author/editor not credited or acknowledged in any way, but his own acknowledgements to the many people who helped him have been deleted as well. This is intellectually dishonest.

A remarkable effort to list all the cars imported to the US, and their specifications. For many cars they have total production, instead of US or North American imports, but they try to organize their information. Some good B/W pictures, and short histories of the marques. A numbers book, with a poorly defined pricing guide, not a picture book.