Recommended Reading – The Golden Guide to Sports Cars

Words and photographs by Peter Doherty.

I have a little paperback book on my bookshelf that somehow has survived nearly 50 years of life changes and house moves. The publication date inside says 1966 (1968 printing), so I must have gotten it when I was just eight or nine years old. My parents knew I was a car-crazy kid and probably picked it up as a Christmas stocking stuffer.  The Golden Guide to Sports Cars was one in a series of books from Western Publishing, aimed primarily at younger readers. Western produced almost 80 pocket-size Golden Guides with titles ranging from Acadia National Park to Zoology.

Like most of the automotive (and aviation) books I received back then, the text didn’t mean much to me at the time. It was only years later, when I finally had a sports car of my own, that I realized just how well written this “kids” book really is. The back cover says it all: “A complete guide to all aspects of sports cars.” Not only are there dozens of tasteful watercolor illustrations depicting the gamut of mid-sixties sports cars, there are sections on their history, ownership, and operation. The book’s introduction was provided by John Bishop, head of the Sports Car Club of America at the time. He wrote that the sports car scene in the U.S. had gone from “a handful of cranks puttering with classic cars” to a sports car “movement.” This, Bishop claimed, had resulted in a revolution of domestic automobile design and marketing: “Four-on-the-floor, disc brakes, bucket seats, and optional performance packages were simply not available before the revolution.”

The list of makes inside the Guide’s 160 pages include the usual names one might expect; lots of small British roadsters, expensive Italian GTs, and precise German machines. America is represented by the Cobra, Corvette, Shelby G.T.350, and the Avanti II. However, it is the lesser known models that catch my eye when I leaf through the book today. Quick, name a sports car from Israel or Switzerland. Give up? How about the Sabra Sport and the Enzmann 506 Super 1300 (no doors!). Another rare ride depicted (and one that I actually saw) is France’s Matra-Bonnet Djet, the world’s first mid-engine production car which debuted in 1962. That times have changed is indicated by the 26 pages needed to list all the British marques, versus the one and a half pages allocated to Japan’s offerings (Hino Contessa 900 Sprint Coupe and Honda Sport S600). Where have Alvis, Elva, Fairthorpe, Gilbern, Marcos, Olympic, Reliant, and Sunbeam all gone? Sigh.

The Golden Guide to Sports Cars really surprises with the detail in the sections on buying, maintaining, and driving sports machines. Want to get a new Triumph TR4A ($2,899 POE New York)? Then you might want to consider the optional Michelin X tires for an extra $35. Two grand too much to swing for a new Healey Sprite? If so, the book warns one must be “willing to make countless trips” following “enticing classified ads in newspapers” to find the right used one. Newspapers – OMG! Within the book’s tear-resistant covers, there are sections showing alternate engine layouts, definitions of automotive terms such as horsepower, torque, and compression ratio, and explanations of how suspensions and brakes work. My father taught me how to double-clutch downshift, but I never knew what was happening in the gearbox until I re-read this book. As to driving, the authors caution “instructions from a book do not constitute adequate training for handling a sports car.” They weigh in anyway, with tips on how to cope with locked wheels (remember pumping the brakes?), skids, crosswinds, and something called “bumpmanship.” The Guide concludes with what must have been the natural progression for many sports car nuts in the sixties: competition. Wanna-be Dan Gurneys had choices starting with on-road TSD rallies, through parking lot gymkhanas, all the way to wheel-to-wheel racing.

When I was a kid it seemed sports cars were everywhere – we even had a couple of race cars getting worked on right in my neighborhood. The Golden Guide to Sports Cars is a great time capsule from that bygone era, a pocket-size reminder of the golden age of sports cars in America.

Despite a long period of non-sporty car ownership, Pete Doherty is still a car guy at heart.  Pete works as night manager at an airport parking garage and can tell you where every interesting car is parked (last week a McLaren on level 3!).  He hopes that someday one of the listings in Hemmings will find its way into his own garage.

See original article at" https://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2016/09/23/recommended-reading-the-golden-guide-to-sports-cars/