Writ­ten or pub­lished by Richard M. Langworth:

COMING IN 2010: The Patriot’s Churchill. Lon­don: Ebury Press and (if we can con­vince them) New York: Pub­lic Affairs. A hand­book of Churchill’s inspir­ing words on Britain, Amer­ica and their tra­di­tions of lib­erty, quo­ta­tions gleaned from books, arti­cles, speeches, pri­vate papers and con­ver­sa­tions, com­piled with the assis­tance of schol­ars, fam­ily mem­bers and those who knew him. In an age of wide­spread cyn­i­cism toward pol­i­tics, The Patriot’s Churchill shows that Churchill knew things can be different—emphasizing his pre­cepts of col­le­gial­ity and friend­ship toward polit­i­cal oppo­nents, mag­na­nim­ity in vic­to­ries, and wry reflec­tions after defeats. Chap­ters include The Flag; Visions of Britain, Amer­ica and the Com­mon­wealth; Equal­ity; Free­dom of Speech and Reli­gion; Free­dom from Want and Fear; Polit­i­cal Con­duct; Great Britons and Amer­i­cans; Inde­pen­dence; the Indi­vid­ual; Peace and War; Rule of Law; Ser­vice to the Nation.

The Defin­i­tive Wit of Win­ston Churchill. Lon­don: Ebury Press, New York: Pub­lic Affairs, Autumn 2009. Dis­tilled from Churchill by Him­self and about one-seventh of its length, this book cap­tures Churchill’s wit and wis­dom on a broad vari­ety of top­ics. Over 100 new quo­ta­tions are added which are not in Churchill by Him­self. Forth­com­ing in Autumn 2009 at a price you can afford, hope­fully des­tined for the “pop­u­lar titles” coun­ters, where we hope it will stay in print for­ever. The jacket for the Pub­lic Affairs edi­tion is what Churchill would call a “Wow.”

Gen­eral Motors: 100 Years. Lin­col­nwood, Ill.: Pub­li­ca­tions Inter­na­tional, 2008. Just in time for GM to go belly-up? Maybe, but I’d rather depend on GM man­age­ment than our rulers in Wash­ing­ton to run the com­pany, which is very profitable—except in the USA. I left the post-1980 story to the edi­tors of Con­sumer Guide because I didn’t want to relive it. Each decade-long chap­ter begins with a quote. For 1970-79, I chose one by the late Tony Hogg, one­time edi­tor of Road & Track: “GM is so big that if you started man­ag­ing it very badly right now, you wouldn’t see the dif­fer­ence for ten years.” (Tony said that in 1973. Hmm.) Con­sumer Guide pro­vides a mam­moth and beau­ti­ful array of color photographs.

Churchill by Him­self: The Defin­i­tive Col­lec­tion of Quo­ta­tions. Lon­don: Ebury Press, New York: Pub­lic Affairs, 2008. “What a drill sergeant of words he was, and what an out­rage it was to let some­one like him loose to embar­rass and humil­i­ate the rest of us mere mor­tal users of the language!….As a trea­sure trove of pro­found obser­va­tions, rolling peri­ods, amusing—often hilarious—one-liners, it threat­ens the hege­mony of Bartlett’s Quo­ta­tions. Leg­end has it that when Milton’s Par­adise Lost was pub­lished, John Dry­den said to fel­low poets fre­quent­ing a cof­fee house, ‘This man cuts us all out, and the ancients too.’ In the same way, all the col­lec­tions of the ‘Wit and Wis­dom of Churchill’ are now ren­dered auto­mat­i­cally obso­lete.” —Man­fred Wei­d­horn in Finest Hour 141.

Anno­tated Bib­li­og­ra­phy of Works About Sir Win­ston S. Churchill (anno­ta­tions for the book by Curt Zoller). Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2004. Over 700 books have been writ­ten specif­i­cally about Churchill, and hun­dred more are in part devoted to him. To Curt Zoller’s com­pre­hen­sive list includ­ing sep­a­rate sec­tions con­tain­ing  major arti­cles and dis­ser­ta­tions. I sup­plied cap­sule, no-nonsense reviews of the 700 books about him—gleaned mainly from the book reviews in Finest Hour—to help you know whether the a book is worth your time.

Connoisseur’s Guide to the Books of Sir Win­ston Churchill. Lon­don: Brasseys, 1998, rep. 2001. No rival to Ronald Cohen’s majes­tic and schol­arly Bib­li­og­ra­phy of the Writ­ings of Sir Win­ston Churchill, this is designed for book col­lec­tors, to illus­trate, describe and eval­u­ate from the stand­point of col­lec­tor desir­abil­ity and aes­thet­ics the many dif­fer­ent edi­tions of Churchill’s nearly fifty books. Cohen Bib­li­og­ra­phy num­bers are cross-referenced. Although still avail­able from Chartwell Book­sellers, there is now an online Collector’s Guide from the same company.

Great Cars of the 20th Cen­tury (with Arch Brown). Lin­col­nwood, Ill.: Pub­li­ca­tions Intl. 1998. Ger­man edi­tion: Trau­mau­tos des 20. Jahrhun­derts. Muller: 1998. This one is so rare that I can’t find an image of the dust jacket on the web. Nev­er­the­less, the pub­lisher had a good run out of it. There’s more than one way to skin a cat: Pub­li­ca­tions Inter­na­tional just vac­u­umed all the arti­cles Arch and I had writ­ten for them and threw this together with their usu­ally excel­lent color pho­tos. If you think of some­thing as a “great car,” chances are it’s in here.

Illus­trated Chrysler Buyer’s Guide, Osceola,Wis., Motor­books Inter­na­tional, 1996. The last (Thank God, you’re say­ing) of my paper­back Buyer’s Guides, in which you must now ignore every­thing I said about prices and invest­ment poten­tial. Two cars dom­i­nate inter­est in the post­war Chryslers: the Town & Coun­try “lum­ber wag­ons” (con­vert­ibles in par­tic­u­lar) built shortly after the war; and the 300 “Let­ter Series” which ran from 1955 to 1965. But Chrysler built many lesser mod­els of great appeal to col­lec­tors, and the best of them are con­sid­ered here.

Illus­trated Dodge Buyer’s Guide, Osce­ola, Wis., Motor­books Inter­na­tional, 1995. The penul­ti­mate Buyer’s Guides for Motor­books Inter­na­tional. Pay no atten­tion to what I said about the prices. Was there a Dodge worth buy­ing before the Red Ram V-8? Hmm. I think so, but don’t hold me to it, I for­get what I wrote here. But Dodge built some great cars in the Fifties, Six­ties, and Sev­en­ties. The best of them are here, with specs, pro­duc­tion fig­ures and photos.

Chrysler and Impe­r­ial: The Clas­sic Post­war Years. Osce­ola, Wis.: Motor­books Inter­na­tional, 1993. New updated edi­tion of my sec­ond book (1976), but not extended to more mod­els. Here’s the story of what hap­pened to Wal­ter Chrysler’s empire after the war, when he wasn’t around to run it. Tracks the post­war renais­sance under K.T. Keller (Chrysler was num­ber two after GM until 1952), the near-failure in 1953-54, the Vir­gil Exner rebirth with the “For­ward Look” of 1955, the age of tail­fins and land yachts, the era of the Cor­doba. Won­der­ful quotes from design­ers, styl­ists and executives.

Hud­son: The Clas­sic Post­war Years 1946-1957. Osce­ola, Wis.: Motor­books Inter­na­tional, 1993. New edi­tion of the 1977 orig­i­nal. Only one man, George Mason of Nash-Kelvinator, real­ized after World War II that the Big Three (GM, Chrysler, Ford) would even­tu­ally wipe out the small inde­pen­dents. Mason started court­ing Hud­son in 1948, finally got them in 1953. Mean­while he was encour­ag­ing Packard to merger with Stude­baker, hop­ing to put them all together. He didn’t suc­ceed, and the big Hud­sons and Nashes van­ished after 1957; but Hud­son in those years pro­duced unique cars by engi­neers who weren’t beholden to any­body, and dom­i­nated NASCAR rac­ing from 1952 to 1954.

Stude­baker 1946-1966: The Clas­sic Post­war Years. Osce­ola, Wis.: Motor­books Inter­na­tional, 1993. New edi­tion with cor­rec­tions of Stude­baker: The Post­war Years (1978). A twenty-year obit­u­ary of how and why Stude­baker went bad, lost money, merged with Packard, dragged Packard down with it, tried again with the Avanti and GT Hawk in the 1960s, but ulti­mately went belly up, after a sad two-year rump oper­a­tion at its sub­sidiary plant in Hamil­ton, Ontario. In the process, Stude­baker nev­er­the­less cre­ated some mem­o­rable cars. See “Why Stude­baker Failed” on this website.

Col­lectible Cars Price Guide 1993. Lin­col­nwood, Illi­nois: Pub­li­ca­tions Inter­na­tional; New York: Signet, 1992. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but unless they were will­ing to go the full peri­od­i­cal route (a field that’s already over­pop­u­lated), the pub­lish­ers were doomed to find this book out of date almost from the moment of pub­li­ca­tion. It hap­pened to arrive with a tem­po­rary defla­tion in col­lec­tor car prices, which fur­ther affected the prices we so dili­gently researched from sales and auc­tions. Nice try but no cigar.

Great Amer­i­can Auto­mo­biles of the 60s (with James Flam­mang), Pub­li­ca­tions Inter­na­tional, 1992. I don’t remem­ber this book, but the pub­lish­ers had a way of vac­u­um­ing the work of their authors and reis­su­ing it, and I’m sure Flam­mang and I were the vic­tims in this case; but maybe we were paid for it! The pub­lish­ers are respon­si­ble for the pho­tographs, and they set a very high stan­dard; look upon our writ­ten com­men­tary as accom­pa­ny­ing boilerplate.

Illus­trated Packard Buyer’s Guide. Osce­ola, Wis.: Motor­books Inter­na­tional, 1991. The prices are out of date now, but the inter­est­ing fea­ture about this Packard entry in the Motor­books Buyer’s Guide series is the “mis­ery index” of trou­bles to watch for, which was cre­ated mostly by indi­vid­ual own­ers of the cars con­cerned. I think it’s still on the money as far as the most col­lectible Packards are con­cerned. Out of print but avail­able online. Fol­low the link.

India, by Win­ston S. Churchill, India (pub­lisher). First Amer­i­can Edi­tion, Hop­kin­ton, N.H.: Drag­onwyck Pub­lish­ing, 1991. In the speeches herein, Churchill led the die-hards in oppos­ing the India Bill of the 1930s, which set India on the path (by no means assured) to inde­pen­dence. The bill passed and he lost with his usual good humor, send­ing a mes­sage to the Great Mahatma: “Tell Mr. Gandhi to use the pow­ers that are offered and make the thing a success….I am gen­uinely sym­pa­thetic towards India….make a suc­cess and if you do I will advo­cate your get­ting much more.” A fire destroyed our remain­ing stock of 500 copies and this book is now scarce, albeit much more afford­able than the 1930s Eng­lish editions.

Illus­trated Stude­baker Buyer’s Guide. Osce­ola, Wis.: Motor­books Inter­na­tional, 1991. A sur­vey that begins in 1902 with the Stude­baker Elec­tric and runs through the great pre-WW2 Pres­i­dent Eights, the post­war Starlights and Star­lin­ers, the Hawks, Larks and on through the Avanti. With basic spec­i­fi­ca­tions, prob­lem areas, his­to­ries of each model, and plen­ti­ful photographs.

Col­lectible Cars (with Chris Poole). Lin­col­nwood, Illi­nois: Pub­li­ca­tions Inter­na­tional; New York: Cres­cent, 1991.

The Corvettes 1953-1988: A Collector’s Guide. Croy­don: Sur­rey: Motor Rac­ing Pub­li­ca­tions, 1989. A run­down from the collector’s stand­point of the sev­eral Corvette gen­er­a­tions dur­ing the first thirty-five years of pro­duc­tion, list­ing the highs, lows, joys and woes of own­er­ship from Stove Bolt Six to Sting Ray to the mod­ern era.

Fifty Years of Amer­i­can Auto­mo­biles 1939-1989. Lin­col­nwood, Illi­nois: Pub­li­ca­tions Inter­na­tional; New York: Beek­man House, Cres­cent Books, 1989.

Corvette: Por­trait of a Leg­end. Lon­don: Smith­mark Publishers, Macdonald, 1989. Ger­man edi­tion: Heel, 1989. My Corvette his­to­ries are all built one on another. The dif­fer­ence with this one was 288 pages of land­scape for­mat, very heavy coated paper, and spec­tac­u­lar large for­mat pho­tog­ra­phy by the Lon­don pub­lish­ers. Copies are plen­ti­ful on eBay: fol­low the link.

Great Amer­i­can Auto­mo­biles of the 50s (with Chris Poole). Lin­col­nwood, Illi­nois: Pub­li­ca­tions Inter­na­tional; New York: Beek­man House, 1989. Ger­man edi­tion: Amerikanis­che Auto­mo­bile der 50er Jahre. Heel, 1991. Ital­ian edi­tion: Auto­mo­bili amer­i­cane degli anni Cinquanta. Nada, 1990. If you think the ’59 Cadil­lac rock­et­ship is not a Great Amer­i­can Auto­mo­bile, then I’m with you, but this is an exer­cise in reprint­ing the best pho­tos of Fifties cars from Col­lectible Auto­mo­bile, and Chris and I wrote the sto­ries to go with the pix they selected. Its 320 pages are packed with color.

The Great Amer­i­can Con­vert­ible. Lin­col­nwood, Illi­nois: Pub­li­ca­tions Inter­na­tional; New York: Beek­man House, 1988. A sur­vey of the con­vert­ible, from its devel­op­ment out of the road­ster and phaeton in the 1930s to the sup­posed end of pro­duc­tion in Amer­ica in the 1970s. A British reviewer com­plained that it was too tech­ni­cal, and too given to pro­duc­tion fig­ures, a legit­i­mate com­plaint. There wasn’t time to write a lyri­cal his­tory, though one should be written.

Illus­trated Buick Buyer’s Guide. Osce­ola, Wis.: Motor­books Inter­na­tional, 1988. For amus­ing reviews (and retorts by the author) click the link and then click the review link. Hell hath no fury like a buff whose favorite is left out! But the fun­ni­est is by a guy who doesn’t know me but knows my son, and since my son is admirable, he’s sure the book is! A more seri­ous Buick col­lec­tor recently noted that I pre­dicted the best Gran Sports would break $50,000, and they’re not even at $25,000 today—which is one more proof that you never want to look at prices or pro­jec­tions in decades-old buy­ers guides.

The Com­plete Book of Corvette. New York: Beek­man House, 1987. Takes the story up through 1988, with a new assort­ment of fine Corvette pho­tos from the auto edi­tors of Con­sumer Guide. My sec­ond Corvette book; they came thick and fast after this one, but I think Con­sumer Guide did an excel­lent job with the lay­out and photography.

Illus­trated Oldsmo­bile Buyer’s Guide. Osce­ola, Wis.: Motor­books Inter­na­tional, 1987. Ama­zon offers an inter­est­ing cus­tomer review: “Although an inter­est­ing read, this book has very lim­ited appli­ca­tion for me. [But I'm glad it was inter­est­ing.] The years and mod­els reviewed have been sub­jec­tively selected [You think?] and the amount of infor­ma­tion on each is uneven and, in my opin­ion, inad­e­quate. As a cur­rent Oldsmo­bile owner [Cur­rent?] I am much more inter­ested in what options were avail­able…” [You want a tech­ni­cal man­ual, not a buyer's guide.]

The Com­plete His­tory of Ford Motor Com­pany (with Gra­ham Robson). Skokie, Illi­nois: Pub­li­ca­tions Inter­na­tional; New York: Beek­man House, 1987. A prod­uct his­tory of Ford, Mer­cury and Lin­coln cov­er­ing the first seventy-five years of pro­duc­tion. Exten­sive text with large sec­tions of color pho­tographs from Col­lectible Auto­mo­bile mag­a­zine.

The Com­plete His­tory of Gen­eral Motors 1908-1986 (with Jan P. Nor­bye). Skokie, Illi­nois: Pub­li­ca­tions International,1986. Cap­i­tal­ized with one thou­sand dol­lars, it grew into the might­i­est indus­trial leviathan, only to come a-crashing down. A prod­uct his­tory of Buick,Cadillac, Oldsmo­bile, Oak­land and Pon­tiac, doc­u­mented by an exten­sive decade-by-decade text and large sec­tions of color pho­tographs from Col­lectible Auto­mo­bile. Yipes: some­one is offer­ing a copy for $840!

Corvette Road­ster: A His­tory of Chevrolet’s Open Sports Car from 1953-1986. Lon­don: Haynes, 1986; Skokie, Illi­nois: Pub­li­ca­tions Inter­na­tional, 1987. A 64-page hard­back prov­ing that you don’t have to say every­thing to sell a book on Corvettes.

The Com­plete His­tory of Chrysler Cor­po­ra­tion 1924-1985 (with Jan P. Nor­bye). Skokie, Illi­nois: Pub­li­ca­tions Inter­na­tional; New York: Beek­man House, 1986. This book was fun to write, chiefly because my co-author was the late, great tech writer Jan Nor­bye, whose engi­neer­ing exper­tise proved indis­pen­si­ble to the story of the engineer-dominated com­pany. Cov­ered all mod­els from the first, and all makes from Ply­mouth to Impe­r­ial, in color and black and white photos.

Illus­trated Cadil­lac Buyer’s Guide. Osce­ola, Wis­con­sin: Motor­books Inter­na­tional, 1986. Sec­ond edi­tion, 1993. This guide cov­ered post­war mod­els only, with the help of Bud Juneau and other Cadil­lac col­lec­tors, who sup­plied first­hand infor­ma­tion of prob­lem areas and what to look for in buy­ing an old Cadillac.

Chevy V-8s 1955-1986: An Enthusiast’s Guide and His­tory, by Terry Boyce (pub­lisher). Hop­kin­ton, N.H.: Drag­onwyck Pub­lish­ing, 1986. Sec­ond and last of our “National Her­itage Series” of deluxe photo-documentaries. What’s more pop­u­lar than a Chevy V-8? Terry Boyce pro­vided expert com­men­tary and cap­tions to the hun­dreds of pho­tos, but the sub­ject was too gen­eral, not spe­cific enough. It was not as suc­cess­ful as The Stude­baker Cen­tury (below).

Chevro­let 1911-1985 (with Jan P. Nor­bye). Skokie, Illi­nois: Pub­li­ca­tions Inter­na­tional; New York: Beek­man House, 1984. Nobody sur­passed the late Jan Nor­bye for tech­ni­cal exper­tise, and writ­ing this his­tory of Chevro­let with Jan was a joy. From the early machi­na­tions of Louis Chevro­let to the Ford rivalry, the Stove­bolt Six, the “clas­sic” 55-57s, the super­cars, and the land whales of the 1980s; 384 pages with color pho­tog­ra­phy of hun­dreds of mod­els from the pages of Col­lectible Automobile.

The Mus­tangs, 1964-1973: A Collector’s Guide. Lon­don: Motor Rac­ing Pub­li­ca­tions, 1984. Sec­ond edi­tion, paper­back, 1992. Jon Bluns­den of MRP took a flyer on a Mus­tang book for the British mar­ket, in his high-selling Collector’s Guide series. The book did well over two edi­tions, cov­er­ing the “clas­sic” Mus­tangs of 1965-69 thor­oughly. Con­trary to what is end­lessly repeated, there was no “1964 1/2″ Mus­tang, though the ’65 was intro­duced in the Spring of 1964.

Ency­clo­pe­dia of Amer­i­can Cars 1930-1980. Skokie, Illi­nois: Pub­li­ca­tions Inter­na­tional; New York: Beek­man House, 1984. Mul­ti­ple revised and extended edi­tions through 2007. Cov­ers every major and minor make; the majors have detailed tables of spec­i­fi­ca­tions, orig­i­nal prices and pro­duc­tion fig­ures; the text cov­ers their his­tory. Ama­zon review­ers rate it 4 1/2 stars: “…the ulti­mate book for the ulti­mate car lover. It has it all, best of its kind, I have sev­erl of these car books and this by far is the best”….My hus­band had to buy two of them because our son stole his last time he came home And he wouldn’t give it back.”

Mercedes-Benz: The First Hun­dred Years. Skokie, Illi­nois: Pub­li­ca­tions Inter­na­tional; New York: Beek­man House, 1984. Abridged edi­tion: Con­sumer Guide Clas­sic Car Series, Octo­ber 1984. Ger­man edi­tion: Serag, 1986. I loved writ­ing about the great rac­ing cars, par­tic­u­larly the sil­ver bul­lets that dom­i­nated Grand Prix rac­ing in the 1930s. Not a com­pre­hen­sive nor a huge book, but the pho­tos do jus­tice to a grand mar­que that earned its rep­u­ta­tion over the past century.

Porsche, a Tra­di­tion of Great­ness. Skokie, Illi­nois: Pub­li­ca­tions Inter­na­tional; New York: Beek­man House, 1983. Abridged edi­tion: Con­sumer Guide Clas­sic Car Series, March 1984. Ger­man edi­tion: Porsche: Die Geschichter einer <<Denk­fab­rik>>. Pfaf­fikon, Ger­many: Serag, n.d. [1984]. Every other Porsche book stands in the shadow of my brother Karl Lud­vigsen (Porsche: Excel­lence Was Expected), which I see is sell­ing for around $200. This is my own take, “on assign­ment” from the pub­lisher, and illus­trated by fine pho­tog­ra­phy through­out. In the 250 pages we had, I think we did Dr. Porsche’s cars justice.

The Stude­baker Cen­tury: A National Her­itage (pub­lisher and co-author with Asa E. Hall). Hop­kin­ton, N.H.: Drag­onwyck Pub­lish­ing, 1983. The late Asa Hall’s com­pre­hen­sive col­lec­tion of pho­tos from the cov­ered wagon to the Avanti was the inspi­ra­tion of this deluxe photo-documentary, printed on fine cream enamel, with illus­tra­tions by Russ von Sauers and a gilt stamped cover. A lim­ited edi­tion, now rare, was offered in padded leather with gilt page edges and silk page marker. Cov­ers Studebaker’s entire 114-year his­tory with detailed cap­tions for the hun­dreds of pho­tos pub­lished here for the first time.

Great Cars from Ford. Skokie, Illi­nois: Pub­li­ca­tions Inter­na­tional, 1982. Proof pos­i­tive of “endur­ing worth” is that one of these 96-page pot­boil­ers is offered for over $80. It was just a worka­day sur­vey of the obvi­ous Ford greats (most of them post­war) over the years, assem­bled with some nice pho­tog­ra­phy. Noth­ing to write home about!

Mus­tang Ency­clo­pe­dia (with Bar­bara Lang­worth, Greg Wells, Rick Kopec). Skokie, Illi­nois: Pub­li­ca­tions Inter­naitonal, 1982. A com­pendium of Mus­tan­giana, incud­ing a restorer’s guide, a guide to the mul­ti­ple acces­sories that made the Mus­tang so many dif­fer­ent cars to so many dif­fer­ent peo­ple; and a source guide for fur­ther infor­ma­tion. Detailed model spec­i­fi­ca­tions through the 1980 model.

Tiger, Alpine, Rapier: Sport­ing Cars from the Rootes Group. Lon­don: Lon­don, Osprey, 1982, rep. Lon­don: Mer­cian Man­u­als, 1999. The Rootes Group (Hill­man, Sunbeam-Talbot, Singer, Hum­ber) was an odd bunch from the start and their sport­ing cars were equally bizarre: a sports car with tail­fins (Alpine), another with a Ford engine sold by Chrysler (Tiger), a hard­top painted Neapoli­tan ice cream col­ors (Rapier), and the oddly named Hum­ber Super Snipe, which Michael Sedg­wick said “induced mal de mer on the motor­way” but man­aged to do tremen­dous things at venues like the East African Safari. A jolly tale of rac­ing and ral­ly­ing in the days when you could do it on a shoe­string. (Stir­ling Moss told Gra­ham Rob­son: “You wouldn’t believe how slow my Alpines were.” Gra­ham replied: “Yes I would!”) See also the Har­ring­ton Harangue.

Hi-Performance Chevro­let. Skokie, Illi­nois: Pub­li­ca­tions Inter­na­tional, 1981. A 96-page pot­boiler on “the fastest and hottest Chevys built from 1953 through 1970. From the devel­op­ment of the orig­i­nal Chevy V-8 through the age of the SS 409, with 16 pages in color.

Camaro. Skokie, Illi­nois: Pub­li­ca­tions Inter­na­tional; Secau­cus, N.J.: Cas­tle Books, 1981. Clas­sic Car Bimonthly, July 1983. As a sporty com­pact, the Cor­vair sadly couldn’t com­pete with the Mus­tang, so Chevro­let turned its atten­tion to a more con­ven­tional lay­out with the Camaro, which saw some of the hottest Chevys in the world dur­ing its early years of pro­duc­tion. Ninety-six pages with 16 in color.

Cars That Never Were: The Pro­to­types. Skokie, Illi­nois: Pub­li­ca­tions Inter­na­tional; New York: Beek­man House, 1981. An inter­est­ing assem­blage of pro­posed, never-built, and show car spe­cials by the Amer­i­can  Big Three and the inde­pents, the usual 96-pager with 16 pages of color. From the Packard Pre­dic­tor and still­born line of big ’57 Packards, to the umpteenth facelift of Dutch Darrin’s 1951 Kaiser, to GM Motorama cars and swoopy Mopar one-offs: the book proved eclec­tic a mix to gen­er­ate much sales, and is today rare.

Great Cars from Chevro­let. Skokie, Illi­nois: Pub­li­ca­tions Inter­na­tional; Secau­cus, N.J.: Cas­tle Books, 1980. This book looks at the most inter­est­ing Chevro­lets from the begin­ning in 1911, but empha­sis is on the post­war: the fab­u­lous ’55 V-8, Corvette, Cor­vair, Camaro, Mon­te­carlo, Super Sports and early Impalas. Ninety-six pages with 16 in color. Now scarce.

Com­plete Book of Col­lectible Cars 1940-1970 (with Gra­ham Rob­son). Skokie, Illi­nois: Pub­li­ca­tions Inter­na­tional, 1980. Revised and extended edi­tions: 1940-1980 (1982); 1930-1980 (1985, revised 1987); 1930-1990 (1992). Graham and I chose sev­eral hun­dred highly col­lectible Amer­i­can, British, Ger­man, Ital­ian and other cars and sup­plied thumb­nail his­to­ries, pros and cons, brief spec­i­fi­ca­tions, pro­duc­tion fig­ures, pithy cri­tiques and even cur­rent val­ues (they were cheap then). Gold stan­dards like Corvette, Packard, Rolls-Royce, Porsche and Fer­rari mixed with odd­balls like Hum­ber, Frazer, Gogo­mo­bil and Amphicar. Con­sumer Guide paid us (once), issued reprint after reprint, and the book is still around, now extended to cover cars through 1990.

Cadil­lac: Stan­dard of Excel­lence 1903-1980. Skokie, Illi­nois: Pub­li­ca­tions Inter­na­tional; Secau­cus, N.J.: Cas­tle Books, 1980. A mar­que his­tory in the Con­sumer Guide 96-page series, with a broad-brush treat­ment of the Cadil­lac story. In the days when I pur­sued the Detroit beat, it was always fun to visit the grand old plant at Clark Avenue, where an aura of per­ma­nence was accom­pa­nied by a gra­cious asser­tion of supremacy. Those were the days.

Cars of the 30s. Skokie, Illi­nois: Pub­li­ca­tions Inter­na­tional; New York: Beek­man House, 1980. Despite a thread­bare econ­omy, the Amer­i­can indus­try reached its finest flow­er­ing in this final decade of the clas­sic era. Last-ditch efforts from firms such as Auburn, Cord, Due­sen­berg and Pierce-Arrow vied with some of the bet­ter mod­els of sur­vivors such as Cadil­lac, Packard, Lin­coln and the Chrysler Imperial.

Per­sonal Lux­ury: The Thun­der­bird Story. Osce­ola, Wis.: Motor­books Inter­na­tional, 1980. Bill Boyer, who largely cre­ated the orig­i­nal two-seater, told me where the famous port­holes came from: off the boat of Gene Bor­di­nat of Ford Styling, when Bill hap­pened to take a cruise on Lake Michi­gan. “It seemed like a neat solu­tion to the vis­i­bil­ity prob­lem of the optional hard­top.” That was how things were done in those days! Large scale for­mat and hun­dreds of pho­tos char­ac­ter­ize this book which goes through 1980 but mainly con­cen­trates on the 1950s and 1960s models.

Tri­umph Cars, A His­tory (with Gra­ham Rob­son). Lon­don: Motor Rac­ing Pub­lish­ers, 1979, rep. 1998, together with a deluxe leather­bound lim­ited edition. A won­der­ful under­tak­ing with my dear friend Gra­ham, in which I took the pre­war his­tory and a few post­war chap­ters, and Gra­ham the rest. The late Michael Sedg­wick, God bless him, wrote: “I should have thought Lang­worth was Eng­lish; no Amer­i­can could know so much about the way it was here in the years between the world wars.”

Cars of the 60s. Skokie, Illi­nois: Pub­li­ca­tions Inter­na­tional; New York: Beek­man House, 1979. The inde­pen­dents were gone, but the Six­ties saw a blos­som­ing of the Big Three and Amer­i­can Motors. This book tells the story of the decade from the new Detroit “com­pacts” through the sporty com­pacts, the Mus­tang and Camaro, the mus­cle cars and lux­ury makes from the Impe­r­ial Southamp­ton to the four-door-convertible Con­ti­nen­tals and Cadil­lac Eldorados.

The Amer­i­can Sports Car. Skokie, Illi­nois: Pub­li­ca­tions Inter­na­tional; New York: Beek­man House, 1979. We begin with the orig­i­nal Yan­kee sports cars: the Mer­cer Race­about and the Stutz Bearcat. The story moves through the sports car revival after World War II, the birth of the Nash-Healey, Wood­ill Wild­fire, Kaiser Dar­rin, Corvette and Thun­der­bird, and on through the great Shelby sports cars of the Six­ties and Seventies.

Mus­tang: The Car That Started the Pony­car Stam­pede. Skokie, Illi­nois: Pub­li­ca­tions Inter­na­tional; New York: Beek­man House, 1978. “Sure I invented the Mus­tang,” Lee Iacocca. I’ll tell you that any­time. But ask around for who invented the Edsel. That’s like old Dio­genes with his lantern, search­ing for an hon­est man! Dozens of styling phots that show the evo­lu­tion of each Mus­tang. Includes Shelby Mus­tang, Boss 302, MachI and com­pe­ti­tion cars, with dri­ving impres­sions of the best models.

Cars of the 40s. Skokie, Illi­nois: Pub­li­ca­tions Inter­na­tional; New York: Beek­man House, 1979. Sur­veys the decade, includ­ing pre­war orphans (LaSalle, Hupp, Gra­ham) and post­war shoot­ing stars (Frazer, Tucker, Kaiser), along with the Big Three and major inde­pen­dents. The most ver­sa­tile For­ties make was Willys, who began the decade as a cheap econ­omy car and ended up with civil­ian ver­sions of the wartime Jeep.

Stude­baker: The Post­war Years. Osceola,Wis.: Motor­books Inter­na­tional, 1978. A twenty-year obit­u­ary of how and why Stude­baker went bad, lost money, merged with Packard, dragged Packard down with it, tried again with the Avanti and GT Hawk in the 1960s, but ulti­mately went belly up, after a sad two-year rump oper­a­tion at its sub­sidiary plant in Hamil­ton, Ontario. In the process, Stude­baker nev­er­the­less cre­ated some mem­o­rable cars. See “Why Stude­baker Failed” on this website.

Packard: A His­tory of the Motor­car and the Com­pany (co-author, co-editor). New York: Dut­ton, 1978-date. Cug­not Award, Soci­ety of Auto­mo­tive His­to­ri­ans. A mam­moth, multi-author under­tak­ing, the joy of which was spoiled some­what by in-house quar­rel­ing, but we all fig­ured out the source and were friends in the end. By far the most com­pre­hen­sive his­tory of Packard; the later bind­ings hold up much bet­ter than the original.

Corvette: America’s Only True Sports Car. Skokie, Illi­nois: Pub­li­ca­tions Inter­na­tional; New York: Beek­man House, 1978. The first of a long string of Corvette books, each build­ing upon the other. Traces the Amer­i­can sports car back to the Mer­cer Race­about and Stutz Bearcat. At Carlisle, when my wife asked a cus­tomer if he would like his copy signed, he asked: “By whom?” Ah, fickle fame.

Cars of the 50s. Skokie, Illi­nois: Pub­li­ca­tions Inter­na­tional; New York: Beek­man House, 1978. Con­sumer Guide issue, April 1980. I think the pub­lish­ers have pro­duced a half dozen dif­fer­ent books by this title. Mine sur­veyed the ranks of Detroit in a decade marked by the horse­power race, the hard­top con­vert­ible, the all-steel sta­tion wagon, tail­fins and tor­sion bars, and the advent of high style in 1955.

The Hot One: Chevro­let 1955-57, by Pat Chap­pell (pub­lisher). Hop­kin­ton, N.H.: Drag­onwyck Pub­lish­ing, 1978, five reprints. Pat Chapell backed reluc­tantly into “clas­sic” Chevys because her hus­band was crazy about them, and got to like them so much that she researched their com­plete his­tory. Her book had five print­ings, and is sought after today. The one to look for has a sil­ver bind­ing, which marked the twenty-fifty anniver­sary of the ’55 Chevy in 1980.

Hud­son: The Post­war Years. Osceola,Wis.: Motor­books Inter­na­tional, 1977. Only one man, George Mason of Nash-Kelvinator, real­ized after World War II that the Big Three (GM, Chrysler, Ford) would even­tu­ally wipe out the small inde­pen­dents. Mason started court­ing Hud­son in 1948, finally got them in 1953. Mean­while he was encour­ag­ing Packard to merger with Stude­baker, hop­ing to put them all together. He didn’t suc­ceed, and the big Hud­sons and Nashes van­ished after 1957; but Hud­son in those years pro­duced unique cars by engi­neers who weren’t beholden to any­body, and dom­i­nated NASCAR rac­ing from 1952 to 1954.

1957 Cars (with Jeff God­shall, Hal Watts). Skokie, Illi­nois: Pub­li­ca­tions Inter­na­tional, 1977. Con­sumer Guide issues of Novem­ber 1977 and August 1980. “I know you are a playboy…And you got a new Fifty-seven too!” The Everly Broth­ers sing along to this run­down of the fab­u­lous ’57s from Detroit. My first project for Pubs Inter­na­tional, the begin­ning of a long rela­tion­ship that still goes on through their mag­a­zine Col­lectible Auto­mo­bile. It’s hard to believe that some­body is sell­ing a “new” copy for $49.95.

Chrysler & Impe­r­ial: The Post­war Years. Osce­ola, Wis., Motor­books Inter­na­tional, 1976. Here’s what hap­pened to Wal­ter Chrysler’s empire in the first two decades after the war, when he wasn’t around to run it. Tracks the post­war renais­sance under K.T. Keller (Chrysler was num­ber two after GM until 1952), the near-failure in 1953-54, the Vir­gil Exner rebirth with the “For­ward Look” of 1955, the age of tail­fins and land yachts, through the era of the Cor­doba. Won­der­ful quotes from design­ers, styl­ists and executives.

Kaiser-Frazer: Last Onslaught on Detroit. New York: Dut­ton, 1975, rep. 1980. “Author’s first book.” Based on dozens of inter­views with for­mer engi­neers, styl­ists and exec­u­tives, packed with rare pho­tos from pro­to­types to per­son­al­i­ties, it won the Antique Auto­mo­bile Club of Amer­ica McK­ean Tro­phy and the Soci­ety of Auto­mo­tive His­to­ri­ans Cug­not Award for the best auto­mo­tive book of 1975. But Kaiser-Frazer was a blip in auto­mo­tive his­tory) and some said it was the answer to a ques­tion nobody asked. You pays your money and you takes your choice.

Fifty Years of Tri­umph. New York: Auto­mo­bile Quar­terly Pub­li­ca­tions, 1973. A soft­bound dis­til­la­tion of my Tri­umph piece in Auto­mo­bile Quar­terly, reprinted for dis­tri­b­u­tion by British Ley­land Motors to help pro­mote the cur­rent line. There were a some his­tor­i­cal gaffes and a few howlers. Tri­umph his­to­rian Gra­ham Rob­son informed me, but that led to our col­lab­o­ra­tion, and a great co-authored book, Tri­umph Cars (above).

Oldsmo­bile: The First Seventy-five Years (with Bev­erly Rae Kimes). New York: Auto­mo­bile Quar­terly Pub­li­ca­tions, 1972. Co-authored with my old col­league (she did the pre-WW2 his­tory, I wrote the post­war) and issued for Olds dealer dis­tri­b­u­tion as a paper­back (illus­trated) as well as a hard­back with dust jacket. Fair to mid­dlin’ pho­tog­ra­phy, only 72 pages: a cap­sule history.

World of Cars. New York: Dut­ton, 1971. An inter­est­ing first assign­ment after I joined Auto­mo­bile Quar­terly in 1970. Dut­ton wanted a slick cof­fee table car book using AQ pho­tog­ra­phy; art direc­tor Ted Hall did the lay­outs (no desk­top pro­gram in those days), giv­ing me a few breaks by allow­ing large for­mat for cars I liked! My job was to write the copy to fit in the space Ted had left. Despite the claimed byline (gimme a break), the copy was the work of many authors. The fin­ished book, printed on very heavy enamel, weighed nearly three pounds. Too bad they didn’t pay us by the pound.