"The World of Automobiles"

[Matt Bacon]

Feeling very pleased with myself, and lucky: just picked up 22 pristine volumes of this bound partwork in a charity shop while on holiday for £20. 2700 pages of 1975 vintage auto history, marques well-known and obscure, technology, famous sports, engineering and design folk, and even "cars of today" in encyclopaedic detail. Bill Boddy, LJK Setright and David Burgess Wise and many other expert names contribute. Setright in particular is great value, whether explaining steering mechanisms or suspension over 10 pages, or tracing Jaguar's history in his inimitable style: "A car for cads, boulevardiers and poodle-fakers..."

Just got to get it home in an already well packed car...

Best,

M.

 

 

Edited July 9, 2017 by Matt Bacon

[Richard Bartrop]

Great score!  I got these as a gift when they first came out.   So much good stuff in there, and so very useful when some trivia master thinks they're going to stump you with some obscure British make (or should I say, marque?)

[Muncie]

Great find!  I found mine at a local garage sale on my afternoon walk about a half mile from home on a Sunday afternoon.  It was already cheap but I talked them down anyway - I was thinking if they said no it would save me carrying it home.  They said OK... funny how carrying things like that seems to make them heavier.  A great reference from A to Z. 

[Matt Bacon]

Tell me about it -- I was very excited carrying it to the till, and it was only as I was packing the volumes into four heavy duty plastic bags that it really occurred to me that I was gonna need to carry them all nearly a mile up the road!

Worth it, though...

best,

M.