Customer Reviews

The Ultimate Classic Car Book

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I thoroughly enjoyed looking at everything contained in Quentin Wilson's "The Ultimate Classic Car Book," but what it contains doesn't even come close to earning it the title, "Ultimate."

Don't get me wrong, it's a very good book and may well be worth your $18 (or whatever you can get it for "Used"). But as a person who owns a classic car and has been active in classic car circles for several years, a book doesn't earn the "Ultimate" designation when it doesn't include the bullet-nosed 1950 or '51 Studebaker, a 1913 Stutz, the Tucker, a '41 Lincoln Zephyr, a '55 Plymouth Belvedere, a '57 Chevy Nomad, or several others widely recognized as classics.

Yes, I realize that my little list there is heavily skewed to American cars, but Wilson's book is VERY heavily skewed to include more models than necessary from Rolls-Royce/Bentley, BMW, Datsun, MG, and a couple of others. Again, don't misunderstand -- those are all great cars that he has included. I simply don't think you can include so many of those, ignore other obvious classics that many of us would like to learn and see more about, and still call your book "Ultimate".

I know I'm obsessing a bit, but if I only had $20 to spend on such a book and bought it over the Internet, I would feel a little cheated upon seeing how much it leaves out. Just make sure you review it thoroughly above so that your expectations are on target.

A great book for any classic car fan. Quentin Wilson shows his love for all classic cars by including the best from Europe, America, Japan, and even Australia! Unlike other British authors, Wilson recognizes cars from around the world, not just roadsters from Europe. Chargers and AC Cobras mingle with Aston Martins, Holden FXs, and the ever popular Ferraris and Lamborghinis. I highly recommend this book.

A great book,cars from all round the world, not just european snob cars. We need a follow up please, there are many more classic Australian and american cars that could be written about, and some more european of course.

What is a classic car? And which of them should be featured in a book titled the ULTIMATE CLASSIC CAR BOOK?

The book claims to have "gathered the most desirable of the world's great cars" but of the hundreds of makes and models that the Classic Car Club of America recognizes as a classic ("a fine or distinctive automobile, either American or foreign built, produced between 1925 and 1948") not one is featured in ULTIMATE CLASSIC CAR. Not even the universally acclaimed Cord 810 Phaeton that American Heritage magazine selected as "The Single Most Beautiful American Car" is included. If your interest is vintage--from highly sought marquees such as Auburn, Franklin, Packard, Pierce-Arrow and Stutz to Detroit's most familiar icons such as the Ford Model T and A--you are out of luck. In fact, except for the 1934 Citroen Avant, no cars manufactured prior to World War Two are to be found in the book.

If classic for you means muscle the ULTIMATE CLASSIC CAR BOOK has the Barracuda, Charger and GTO but omits the Challenger, Coronet, Cougar and many others. In 1990 Car and Driver magazine selected the ten best muscle cars of all time, but of the ten, only the Pontiac GTO makes it into the ULTIMATE CLASSIC CAR BOOK.

Regardless of the model year or type of vehicle you will not find any AMC, Chrysler, De Soto, Kaiser, Lincoln, Mercury, Nash, Oldsmobile, or Studebaker cars profiled in the book. Of the 90 cars featured in ULTIMATE CLASSIC CAR only 16 are American made. Plymouth gets two pages for one of its cars, while Citroen gets ten. In the book's 224 pages only European sport cars are reasonably represented.

Dorling Kindersley (DK) publishes many beautiful photograph filled books and ULTIMATE CLASSIC CAR is no exception--but this classic car book is far from being the ultimate and will surely disappoint anyone fascinated in America's great venerable cars.

It seems Quentin Willson has made the ideal coffee table book. The Ultimate Classic Car Book groups together all shapes and sizes of classic cars from DeLoreans to Datsuns and Vegas to Volkswagens, and all with original and beautiful photographs wrapped in concise and precise text equavalent to about a page of novel. Willson does a very consistent job of presenting each car with basic facts and statistics along side special traits or other interesting items that make each car unique. One example of an interesting fact is the mention of the "Autronic Eye" available as an option on the 1959 cadillac convertible that would dim the headlights when an oncoming car approached. Willson also gives us insight into the cars by adding his own commentary. Examples of this can be found in his reference to the "Autronic Eye" as a mere marketing gimmick that never took off and his accusal that the stainless steel of the delorean was a "cynical marketing ploy." Even if you aren't interested in reading about the many classic cars of the world, this book is worth a purchase just for the full color meticulously crafted photographs and trivia. I would recommend The Ultimate Classic Car book to anyone interested in learning about automobiles of the past

The inside of the book is great but I don't recommend it in paper back. My said "like new" but that was no the case.

What a great book! I bought it for my brother and he loved it. Great photos, well organized, nice background material provided -- just what I was hoping for.

This book is very beautiful. It has great pictures of each car from different angles, a short description of each car and lots of comments about certain details.

Although this is a very nice book, it doesn't quite live up to its title, for a couple of reasons. First of all, the descriptions for each car is quite short so if you're interested in some specific cars, you'll need to look elsewhere for more complete information.

The other reason is the choice of cars included in the book, as well as excluded. It's obviously very difficult to choose among all the classic cars in history, but here, the term "classis car" seems to have a vague defenition. Here are some cars that are undoubtedly classics because they are of great historical importance, such as Mini Cooper, Citroen 2CV, some that are classics because they are among the most sought after exclusive cars in the world, such as Bentley, Rolls Royce Silver Cloud, Lamborghini Countach, Ferrari 365, etc. But there are also those that don't seem to be classics at all, that the writer himself says are bad, like Maserati Kyalami and Daimler Dart. How come these are included when certain other classics are excluded? I also wonder why there are no pictures of the early Lamborghini Countach but only the anniversary model, and why did they chose late convertible models of classics such as Morris Minor and Volkswagen?

These are just minor flaws and this is a very good book that I'm glad I own. But don't buy it expecting an "ultimate classic car book".

A truly great book that captures the essence of the car industry so well. From the humble 2cv to the Ferrari 250 GT, the Caddilac Eldorado to the Bugeye Sprite, this book has it all. It shows what this is industry is from the beggining to the present. If you don't have it already buy it, even just for the pictures, a masterpjece.

What diferentiate this book from the others are the photos. We can see that all of them were taken exclusively to this book. For all the cars there are front/side/rear view photos. For some of them there are also top-views, that is hard to find in other sources.

The text is consice, yet informative, and includes summarised technical specifications.