Autobooks: The Car Book of the Year
June 1, 2005
Drive On! A Social History of the Motor Car
Serious car enthusiasts have
doubtlessly amassed a burdensome collection of literature ranging from general
histories to one-marque tomes, periodicals, and ephemera pertaining to their
favorite automobiles. These auto-obsessed bibliophiles should risk the collapse
of a shelf by acquiring one more book, Drive On! A Social History of the Motor
Car—an essential addition to any automotive library. For more than 40 years, its
author, L.J.K. Setright, has been among the most articulate and intelligent
voices to resonate in magazines and books devoted to our preferred subject. His
may also be the most iconoclastic and entertaining.
In Drive On! Setright
examines the century-plus history of the automobile, beginning with a
decade-by-decade review that considers the world-changing cause and
effect—social, scientific, economic, and political—of the motorcar and the
industry it spawned. Four additional sections elucidate facts and theories both
trivial and monumental. I learned, for instance, that Gran Turismo, the
expression from which the initials were derived, was coined in Italy in the
context of the 1929 1,750 cc Alfa Romeo, and that a load of silk took three
years to travel by pack animals from China to Europe.
Setright considers
Virgil, Samuel Johnson, Karl Marx, and other noncar notables, and while his
elegant style is serious in the extreme, he is also wickedly opinionated and
witty. Unlike many British journalists, his tone is not myopically Anglocentric;
rather, Setright brilliantly employs the English language to talk about an
international passion.
Drive On! is available in hardcover (405 pages) and
paperback, with black-and-white illustrations, from your local bookstore or
online.
Granta Books, www.granta.com
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