New Media
Must Read/Must See

The wait is over -- 33 years after its theatrical release, Steve McQueen's racing masterpiece, "LeMans" is finally available on DVD. Considered by many to be the best racing film ever made, "LeMans" was Steve McQueen's tribute to his personal passion for cars and competition. Presented on wide-screen letterbox format and digitally re-mastered from a pristine film print, this DVD captures all of the excitement of the original release. Here's a DVD that begs to play on a wide-screen TV with surround sound. Crank up the volume, sit back and you can practically smell the racing gas. While the motion picture was made with a supporting cast of 45 professional racers, Steve McQueen did all of his own high speed driving for the film. McQueen was a well-respected racer in his own right and so his intimate knowledge of the professional racing community gives "LeMans" a gritty realism missing from so many previous racing films. The racing sequences account for 90% of the film footage, leaving the viewer breathless. Never has the average film fan been so close to the racing action. Three decades after its initial release, "LeMans" is still the film by which all other racing films are measured.

Car design is a complex art that involves a lot more than just putting pen to paper or mouse to pad. American Car Design Now by C. Edson Armi gives us an inside look at the process through the words and techniques of top designers from Ford, General Motors and DaimlerChrysler. The book explores not just style and shapes, but how designers approach the customer, the accountants, and most importantly, the executives upstairs, as they strive to create an ideal design. It's not a light or casual read, but for the dedicated student of automotive design, the book is packed with fascinating insights into how experts like Tom Gale, J Mays, Wayne Cherry and others produce some of Motown's most enticing car designs.

Many of us cannot define art or obscenity, but we know it when we see it. Author Eric Peters, however, knows an ugly car when he sees one, and can tell you exactly why. His new book Automotive Atrocities!: The Cars We Love to Hate, is a clever, sometimes cutting, look at some of the worst cars ever to soil the world's roads. Now, some may take exception, but few can argue with most of his choices, or his sharp, biting descriptions of their journey from the factory to the junkyard.

Collecting the cars of hospitals and funeral homes is a pretty specialized field, but as Gregg Merksamer show us in Professional Cars: Ambulances, Hearses and Flower Cars, this little known segment of the collector car hobby is filled with fascinating design work and very specialized engineering. Lavishly illustrated with hundreds of black and white photos, it's a very interesting look at a very unique branch of the automotive family tree.

Few of us will ever own the Ford GT super car, but we can all get an inside look at its history and development in Ford GT: The Legend Comes to Life. Author Larry Edsall takes us step by step through the design and construction of the GT, starting with a short history of its almost unbeatable ancestor, the original GT 40. With a forward by the legendary Carroll Shelby, superb color photography and sharp, concise copy, this is a great book for fans of a great car.

If you're certified gearhead, then Ferrari Formula 1 by Peter Wright is the book for you. It's an incredibly detailed behind-the-scenes technical analysis of Ferrari's championship winning F1-2000 Formula 1 race car. Granted unprecedented access to the normally secret world of Ferrari engineering and design, Mr. Wright shows us the real nuts, bolts and software of modern race car design. It hardly qualifies as light reading, but if you're fascinated by serious technical detail, this is definitely a must read.

In today's Harley-happy America, biker books are a dime a dozen, and most are pretty much the same, except, that is, for Soul on Bikes by Tobie Gene Levingston and co-authors Keith and Kent Zimmerman. It's the story of the East Bay Dragons, one of California's oldest and best known African-American motorcycle clubs and the vibrant black biker culture that they helped to create. But this book is about much more than just motorcycles. Granted, there's plenty of the bragging, rowdy behavior and road stories that one expects from hardcore bikers, but there's also a deeper story of family, from the Levingston's roots as Louisiana sharecroppers to the close-knit family of modern African-American motorcycle clubs. This book belongs in every serious biker's library.

The sports car era of the '60s and '70s was one of the most exciting in auto racing history, and many of the most exciting cars involved came from Ferrari. In Ferrari Prototype Era 1962-1973 in Photographs, renowned automotive journalist, Alan Henry, truly captures these exquisite race cars and their time of greatest glory. It's primarily a superb photo book, but one with concise, informative copy that hits all the high notes of that exciting decade. Race fans will love it.