Independent Sports Cars

Covers AMX, Avanti, Crosley Hot Shot, Kaiser Darrin, DeLorean DMC, Hudson Italia, AMC Javelin, Nash-Healey and Packard and Studebaker Hawk. Excellant primer and reference Gudie. Over 150 Large B&W photos. Details and basic specs. Historic text.

The sports car has always been the ultimate symbol of automotive fun and freedom, from the earliest Bentleys and Stutzes through the Porsche Boxster and Lotus Elise of today. Sports Cars profiles over 50 cars from the early twentieth century to today, with lavish color photography from renowned automotive lensman James Mann. This book will surely grab the attention of any sports car lover."--

365 Sports Cars You Must Drive puts you in the driver's seat of a century's worth of sports car legends (and a few rather less legendary), each presented with a fun and informative profile and fact-and-spec box. It's the ultimate gearhead's bucket list and poses the challenge: How many have you driven? Whoever coined the phrase "getting there is half the fun" must have owned a sports car. And the wag who suggested that "it's the journey not the destination"? Probably driving a Lotus or MG at the time. From towering icons like Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche, and Corvette to everyman sportsters from Triumph, MG, Sunbeam, and Miata to oddballs like Crosley, Sabra, and DB, sports cars inspire passion and strong opinions as few other vehicles on the road can. In one beautiful book, long-time Road & Truck​ magazine chief photographer John Lamm, along with other top motoring contributors, gives the reader illustrated profiles of every sports car you've ever dreamed of driving! Now, imagine if you could drive a different sports car—any sports car—every single day for a year. Which would you choose?

Auto historians and readers interested in business history will enjoy Storied Independent Automakers.

More than 1,000 photographs in b&w and color illustrate the extraordinary variety of sports cars that have been offered to the public. All the great names are featured, including cars from Israel, Egypt, Spain, Switzerland, Norway and Brazil.

This book covers American Sports Cars built in limited numbers, over a limited number of years. They were built in an effort to rival the best of sports cars from the UK and Europe and were also for a time rivals to Americas only continuously built sports car, the Corvette.

1 The Development of the Sports Car.- Motor sport.- The sports car.- The history of the sports car.- The first sports car.- The fabulous years.- Historic sports cars.- The future of the sports car.- 2 The Engine: Combustion.- Cylinder head history.- Combustion chamber research.- Volumetric efficiency.- Knock.- Limiting compression ratio.- Types of combustion chamber.- 3 The Engine: Induction and Exhaust.- The induction system.- The 4-cylinder in-line engine.- The 6-cylinder in-line engine.- The V-8 engine.- Ramming induction pipes.- Ramming pipe theory.- Forward-ram intakes.- Cold-air intakes.

The independent automakers who had survived the depression of the 1930s had flexibility and enough capital from the war to be the first to launch all-new models for a car starved nation. So lucrative was the American post-war car market that new automobile companies were also formed to cash in on the pent-up demand for new cars. This is their story told through text and the use of contemporary brochures, period literature, factory photos, road test info and over 90 new, unpublished color photos of restored examples to relate the importance of these historic vehicles.

Covering the small cars offered to the American market by Independent American Auto Makers. Includes: Crosley, King Midget Metropolitan, Germlin, Spirit and Kammback. A great primer and quick reference guide