AUTHOR      Bamsey

    ENGLISH

ISBN 10        0854297804

ISBN 13        9780854297801

Price                    $45.00

OUT OF PRINT -- AVAILABLE @ BLOCKS BOOKS

FROM MY REVIEWS IN EXCELLENCE MAGAZINE:

Turbo Racing Cars, a mini coffee table book (30 x 22 cm, 158 pages) had the smell of a moderately to grossly overpriced book.  Surprise, it is a very nice history book and is even readable.  I am especially taken by the first chapter which follow the fortunes of the Richard Lloyd (nee Cannon) 956/962 team.

    Let me quote from the first paragraph of the book:  “Richard Lloyd found his Porsche Turbo Racing Car in an underground car park . . . and the car park was close to the Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen headquarters of Dr. INg. h.c. F. Porsche AG.  this was not ordinary car park:  it was filled with very special Porsche road and racing cars awaiting collection.  Lined up for Lloyd was Porsche type 956 chassis number 106, one of the first batch of group C cars released into private hands . . . for the princely sum of 150,000 pound Lloyd now had his own example of the crushingly successful model.”  Amazing to think that Porsche has an underground garage where you or I could pickup a “sonderwunche” or racing car -- had we sufficient money.  the first chapter traces the fortunes of the Lloyd team, which basically didn’t have the resources to complete with the factory on horsepower, but instead stayed in competition by chassis -- including entire replacement -- modifications.

    The remainder of the book deals with all of the racing turbos, chapter by chapter.  Not only are the expected cars covered, but this is one of the few books to not only admit it exists, but actually recognize the contributions of the 904/4 -- basically the 908/3 chassis with the RSR turbo engine.  If the difference between the 935 and RSR turbo isn’t clear to you, and you would like to know, or definitely if you, this book is for you.  Actually the graphics are impressive and the color photographs are up to the usual European standards.  My only quibble is that Bamsey spends an inordinate amount of space delineating the difference between a boxer and horizontally opposed engine.  And there isn’t any.

   

AUTHOR     Bamsey, Oursler

    ENGLISH

ISBN 10         0854296050

ISBN 13         9780854296057

OUT OF PRINT -- NOT CURRENTLY AVAILABLE @ BLOCKS BOOKS

FROM REVIEWS IN EXCELLENCE MAGAZINE:

    This is a large format, very complete history of the 917.  It explores Porsche’s reasons for developing the car in that Porsche had always been successful in small capacity classes of sports car racing, but decided to set its sights higher, specifically LeMans.

    Ferdinand Peich was the guiding force behind the development of the 917.  At the time, racing rules limited the prototype cars to 3.0 litres.  However, a loophole allowed 5.0 litres if 25 examples were constructed at the outset.  It was a prodigious undertaking to not only design an all new race car, but also to generate the resources necessary to build 25 of them.

    This bok examines in minute detail the year by year development of the car and its racing history.  As is typical  in a book with such a narrow focus, there is a strong technical orientation.  For someone interested in a detailed accounting of all engine, chassis and component features the book should be of real interest.  I found it a little tedious, but I find the influence of people on on automobiles more interesting than mechanical details.

    It covers the racing history of the car form 1969 through the CAn AM series in the early ‘70s to the final race in 1981.  It discusses the difficulties in handling this powerful car and how these problems were solved.

    One of the shortcomings of the book is that there are no appendices.  Since these cars are so rare, it would be of great interest to attempt to account for all of them.  Even though history of the car is covered throughly in the text, it is nice to have a summary of the cars and their results with different design or mechanical configurations in tabular form in an appendix to the book.

    There is extensive color and back and white photography in the book, but it is of very poor quality.  Many of the pictures appear to be out of focus.

    At $29,95, the book is reasonably price for a hardbound book on such a limited subject.  For a Porsche racing fan, the book is recommended.  For other Porsche people, it should be examined before purchase.

AUTHOR     Bamsey

    ENGLISH

ISBN 10         0947914005

ISBN 13         no ISBN 13

OUT OF PRINT -- NOT CURRENTLY AVAILABLE @ BLOCKS BOOKS