Skip to main content

Magazine

Book Review: 'Sports Car Racing In Camera 1960-69'



From the author who provided the captions to Michael Cooper’s ‘Sixties Motor Racing’ comes a slimmer volume, featuring all-colour photography that will wow and astound anyone who considers this decade the zenith of two-seater motorsport.

Over 240 pages, Paul Parker charts the course of sports and GT racing at venues including Reims, Goodwood, the ‘Ring and Le Mans, via the cars and personalities that have generated the modern collecting cult. It’s a cult that's led to the phenomenal rise in the values of machinery such as the Ford GT40, Ferrari 250 GT SWB and Porsche 910.

Take it from me, this book has it all. From the opening photo of the 1966 Maranello Concessionaires Ferrari P2 being prepared in a dusty Le Mans paddock, its aluminium bodywork propped up by a hefty baulk of timber, to the final photos of Siffert and Ahrens celebrating the maiden win of a heavily chopped-about semi-works Porsche 917, it has enough rarely-seen content to hold the attention of any self-respecting enthusiast for the era.

The privateers like David Piper and Paul Hawkins are as well-represented as the works entries from Ford, Chaparral and SEFAC Ferrari, so you can enjoy photos of little-seen exotica such as the 1962 Maserati Tipo 64 at the Targa Florio, as well as the early Ford MkIIs at Le Mans complete with extensive fins, spoilers and splitters hastily fabricated from aluminium. So much for the computer-designed race car.

David Piper writes the forward and sums it all up when he says ‘The 1960s were the golden years for me, the risks were high and we put ourselves on the line, but it was worth it’.

Christmas isn’t so far away - you'd better make sure you have a copy of this book in your stocking.

The book (hardback, 280 x 230mm, 240 pages, 280 colour illustrations, ISBN: 9781844254002) is available by mail order direct from the publishers HERE at £30.00 plus carriage.

Text - Steve Wakefield
Photos - Haynes - Strictly Copyright


ClassicInside - The Classic Driver Newsletter
Free Subscription!