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Motoring Book of the Year Awards 2020
MOTORING BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARDS
2020 MOTORING BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARDS
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Some truly great books have been the recipients of the awards over the years and this year two more worthy recipients will soon be added to the roll of honour. Here’s a glimpse of just a few from the shortlist.
Words by Simon Taylor
IN THIS AGE of instant electronic gratification, we can rejoice that books continue to thrive. Nowhere is this truer than in the motoring segment. Every year, more books, of ever higher quality and merit, are published on cars, their history, their design, their creators and their motor sporting prowess. The Royal Automobile Club’s library in Pall Mall houses some 6,000 books, and each year it celebrates published excellence in the Club’s prestigious Motoring Book Awards.
“The Awards have become synonymous with celebrating the best automotive books, authors and publishers,” says Jeremy Vaughan, Head of Motoring. “The quality of entries this year has been quite remarkable, which is a reassuring sign that the industry is in good shape and the appetite for motoring books continue to be healthy.”
This year’s judging panel, drawn from top writers and dedicated retailers, had the almost impossible task of selecting a Motoring Book of the Year and a Specialist Motoring Book of the Year from a record number of nearly 40 nominations. First they had to decide on their short-list of six in both categories, and here’s a glimpse of some of them.
In price the short-listed titles start at £20 for A Race with Love and Death, Richard Williams’ moving biography of the prewar British Grand Prix star Dick Seaman. Beautifully written and prodigiously researched, it is a fitting tribute to this great racer who was killed in 1939 driving for Mercedes, a few months before the outbreak of war.
Below left: Image courtesy of Simon & Schuster UK
Images courtesy of Motoring Past Vintage Publishing (above) and Unicorn Publishing Group (below)
The Club library in Pall Mall houses some 6,000 books, and each year we celebrate published excellence in the Club’s prestigious Motoring Book Awards.
At the other end of the scale is the £450 needed to buy Serge Vanbockryk’s massive two-volume tome, Ultimate Works Porsche 956. Weighing in at 7kg, it devotes 800 pages to tracing the entire history of just one type of racing Porsche. Barely a dozen 956s were built, but their histories and their drivers are covered in bewildering detail, supported by superb photography.
As always, the entries showed great variety. In Design Between the Lines, visionary car designer Patrick Le Quément has written a delightful book, which is not an autobiography but a series of 50 outspoken, amusing and highly perceptive essays that throw new light on the art and philosophy of how cars are created. There have been many books on Land Rover, which qualifies now more than ever as a cult car, but none have covered the type as comprehensively as James Taylor’s The Complete Catalogue of the Land Rover. And in Richie Ginther, Motor Racing’s Free Thinker Richard Jenkins has produced a fine biography of a man who has been ignored by most Formula 1 historians. He was not only a top racing driver in his day but also a free spirit, and in philosophy and lifestyle very different from most of his fellows on the grid.
The man behind the Shadow racing team, Don Nichols, has always been something of a hidden figure. In The Magnificent Machines of a Man of Mystery the American writer Pete Lyons not only covers the cars and the races but has also persuaded Nichols to reveal fascinating and previously unpublished stories of battles and dramas in the team’s life.
The great F1 World Champion Niki Lauda has, not surprisingly, been the subject of many books, but Jon Saltinstall has taken a different approach in Niki Lauda, His Competition History. Every single one of his 316 races is treated separately, from his first hillclimb as a teenager in a Mini to the end of his brilliant F1 career, and there are photographs of virtually all of them.
These and the other titles in the Top 12 all have their own unique claim to glory. But in the end the judges managed to select their two winners, revealed at an event at Pall Mall on 28 October. They will join the roster of great books that have achieved fame through the Royal Automobile Club Motoring Book of the Year Awards.
MOTORING BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD SHORTLIST 2020
Richie Ginther, Motor Racing’s Free Thinker by Richard Jenkins (Performance Publishing)
Louis Coatalen: Engineering Impresario of Humber, Sunbeam, Talbot and Darracq by Oliver Heal (Unicorn Publishing Group)
A Race with Love and Death: The Story of Richard Seaman by Richard Williams (Simon & Schuster UK)
The Complete Catalogue of the Land Rover by James Taylor (Herridge & Sons)
Niki Lauda, His Competition History by John Saltinstall (Evro Publishing)
Design Between the Lines by Patrick le Quément (Merrell Publishers)
Claude Deane: Western Australia’s Motor Dealer Extraordinaire by Graeme Cocks (Motoring Past Vintage Publishing)
Shadow: The Magnificent Machines of a Man of Mystery by Pete Lyons (Evro Publishing)
Ultimate Works Porsche 956 – The Definitive History by Serge Vanbokcryk (Porter Press International)
Sharknose V6 – Ferrari 156, Ferrari 246SP & Ferrari 196SP by Jorg-Thomas Foedisch & Rainer Rossbach (McKlein Publishing)
Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe: The autobiography of CSX2300 by Rinsey Mills (Porter Press International)
Maserati, In the World Sports Car and Manufacturers Championships from 1953 to 1966 by Michel Bollée and Jean-François Blachette (Syllabe Editions)
