TRIUMPH CARS: 100 Years, beautiful nostalgia for a bygone way of motoring

TRIUMPH CARS: 100 Years
ROSS ALKUREISHI
Motorbooks International
$60.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Triumph Cars is a comprehensive, gorgeously illustrated history of the Triumph sports cars sought by today’s collectors and admired by automotive enthusiasts.

Experience the entire history of Triumph sports cars in this comprehensive volume featuring stunning studio photography, rare archival images, and period advertising.

Triumph Cars chronicles the company and its remarkable vehicles, from the first 10/20 through a string of automobiles sought after by collectors, from the early Supers and Glorias through the entire TR and Spitfire ranges, and on to the legendary GT6 and the latter-day 1300, 1500, and Dolomite sedans—filled with images, history, and in-depth analyses of players, tech, and styling.

With roots extending to a London bicycle importer established in 1885, Triumph built its first car in 1923: the Triumph 10/20. By 1930, the Triumph Cycle Co. had become Triumph Motor Company and was on its way to establishing seven decades of automotive heritage.

Author Ross Alkureishi showcases how company visionaries developed the brand—and how the brand changed hands—in the trying economic times of the 1930s and during the war years. The Standard years beginning in 1944 are also examined, along with associations with Jaguar and the range of roadsters and saloons developed, arguably peaking with the introduction of the TR2 sports car in 1953.

Alkureishi proceeds through the stylish 1950s cars and on to the Leyland years beginning in 1960, and associated engine and styling developments. The story ends with the last Triumph model, the Acclaim introduced in 1981, and the marque’s subsequent mothballing. Along the way, Alkureishi also highlights Triumph motorsport exploits, particularly in the realm of rally cars.

From the 1923 steel-paneled 10/20 through a range of roadsters, saloons, and sports cars, Triumph Cars offers a definitive review of an iconic British marque. The book is illustrated with hundreds of historic, contemporary, and racing photographs, as well as detailed text. This is the one volume no sports car enthusiast can be without.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: When I was a kid in Austin of the 1970s, my friend Mike's much-older sister had a Triumph Spitfire that, a couple times, she let him drive me around in...what heaven that was! A little zippy car in the hilly, fun-to-drive city! It was hot, of course, being Texas and a roadster without air conditioning, but such was the price for being able to whip around the Cadillacs and F150s the choked the roads then—and now, I'll bet.

It was the same color as this one, even!

What makes Triumph an interesting make of car to learn about is the extent of its history in the UK car market, the sporting niche it occupied for much of its existence, its racing legacy...but here in the US, it was one of the British Invasion little, nimble, fun-to-drive cars that came along with the Beatles.

I loved revisiting the Spitfire, and the TR6 that one of the guys I dated in the 1980s had:

...but I also learned about the motorsports heritage of the marque:

...that was largely unknown to me. The Triumph nameplate is, as of now, not applied to any modern cars. BMW owns it, so if it is revived we can expect the product wearing it to be a badge-engineered sporty BMW. Given how well BMW has done with its ownership of the Mini marque, they'll only use Triumph if there's some pressing advantage to doing so. Maybe we'll see some electric cars that look like the older models of Triumph's past!

It could happen....

A great Yule-gifting treat for your gearhead!

2020...the year the world stopped for a minute

THE DARK FANTASTIC: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games
EBONY ELIZABETH THOMAS
NYU Press
$16.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

Many thanks to Edelweiss+ and NYU Press for my DRC of this book

This past November 1st, Author Ebony Elizabeth Thomas won the 2020 World Fantasy Special Award for Professionals in recognition of this title's outsized importance in its field. Any in-depth review of the book will simply be retyping it; the author is adept at stating home truths in trenchant, relatable ways: "Maybe it’s not that kids and teens of color and other marginalized and minoritized young people don’t like to read. Maybe the real issue is that many adults haven’t thought very much about the radicalized mirrors, windows, and doors that are in the books we offer them to read, in the television and movies we invite them to view, and in the fan communities we entice them to play in." It is a wonder to find someone as adept as Octavia Butler was at making the nature of the wrongs embedded in our lush, vibrant SF literary world clear and present and, as a result, actionable. If you're white, love to read fantasy, science fiction, or horror fiction, this is a must read.

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THE SECRET LIFE OF GROCERIES: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket
BENJAMIN LORR
Avery
$27.00 hardcover, $15.99 ebook editions, available now

Rating: 4* of five

Many thanks to Edelweiss+ and Avery for my DRC of this book

In a five-year odyssey through the world created to feed American consumers, Author Lorr sees the behind-the-scenes costs of the cornucopia you visited weekly if not daily....and now likely use the internet to have delivered to you. The appalling conditions of Asian slave laborers, the crushing debts of US truckers, and the battle to prevent consumers from knowing the true cost of cheap food come flying at you as fast as you can turn the pages. Those of us holed up in isolation need to read about those who have no choice but to risk plague to keep us from the risks of stepping outside. Given how many discovered the sheer creative joy of manipulating our food to taste even better might've slightly reduced our own carbon footprints...but others took up our slack. My dote Mary Roach (Stiff, Bonk, Packing for Mars) said it best in her blurb:

The modern shopper wants groceries that are ethical, sustainable, humane, affordable, fresh, and convenient. But as Lorr discovers, the costs of our demands are recouped from the bottom of the food chain: debt-ruined truckers, foreign slave labor, and Whole Foods workers in our own communities — the people whose lives Lorr shared (and sometimes lived) for weeks or months. Does it sound grim? It’s not! The Secret Life of Groceries is a terrific read. The stories flow, and the hard truths are seasoned with wit and hope.

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VESPER FLIGHTS
HELEN MACDONALD
Grove Press
$27.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

Many thanks to NetGalley and Grove Press for my DRC of this book

Alone among the literate world, I was made uncomfortable by the relationship between naturalist Macdonald and Mabel the formerly wild hawk told in H is for Hawk. These essays on many topics are written in Author Macdonald's justly celebrated elegant prose, and include so many aperçus that my commonplace book blew up. If you don't share my unease with people venerating wildness while taming it out of a fellow being, you'll enjoy this collection without my unshakeable unease.

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CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE HEALTH OF NATIONS: Famines, Fevers, and the Fate of Populations
ANTHONY J. MCMICHAEL
Oxford University Press
$26.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

Many thanks to NetGalley and Oxford University Press for my DRC of this book


I wanted to see what the world has done to challenge us as hard as unchecked climate change is doing at this very moment. With a startlingly immense grasp, the scope of Humankind's long fight to survive despite the ways Earth changes is calmly but urgently expressed by Author McMichael. Anyone who loves to learn the ins and outs of a complex topic with a master teacher will lap this book up. The regime change due in the US on 20 January 2021 is the perfect time to learn why we should force our lawmakers to focus on responding effectively to climate change's many effects on health, wealth, and food security.

CHRYSLER'S TURBINE CAR, a history of squandered opportunities to reduce carbon emissions

CHRYSLER'S TURBINE CAR: The Rise and Fall of Detroit's Coolest Creation 

STEVE LEHTO 

Chicago Review Press 

$9.99 ebook editions, available now 

 Rating: 3.5* of five 

  The Publisher Says: The fascinating story of an almost-forgotten automotive phenomenon 

 In 1964, Chrysler gave the world a glimpse of the future. They built a fleet of turbine cars—automobiles with jet engines—and loaned them out to members of the public. 

The fleet logged over a million miles; the exercise was a raging success. These turbine engines would run on any flammable liquid—tequila, heating oil, Chanel #5, diesel, alcohol, kerosene. If the cars had been mass produced, we might have cars today that do not require petroleum-derived fuels. The engine was also much simpler than the piston engine—it contained one-fifth the number of moving parts and required much less maintenance. The cars had no radiators or fan belts and never needed oil changes. 

 Yet Chrysler crushed and burned most of the cars two years later; the jet car's brief glory was over. Where did it all go wrong? Controversy still follows the program, and questions about how and why it was killed have never been satisfactorily answered. 

 Steve Lehto has interviewed all the surviving members of the turbine car program--from the metallurgist who created the exotic metals for the interior of the engine to the test driver who drove it at Chrysler’s proving grounds for days on end. Lehto takes these first-hand accounts and weaves them into a great story about the coolest car Detroit ever produced. 

I BORROWED THIS BOOK FROM MY LOCAL LIBRARY. SUPPORT YOUR LIBRARY, FOLKS! 

 My Review: A short, concise history of the very thing the title declares: The coolest creation ever to come out of Detroit!

Oh wow! Oh cool! Oh my GOD why didn't they make this?!

Well, after reading this book, I know why: It was too far ahead of its time, and when its time came, the company was on the ropes. 

The author spoke to everyone he could find still living who participated in the most amazing PR campaign of all time: Chrysler made 50 of these babies and, over the course of 1964-1966, lent them out to 203 drivers for 90 days apiece. The 50 cars racked up over 1 million miles of travel, and had less than 1% downtime in all of that driving. Reliability was clearly not a huge issue. But what *was* a huge issue was the way the turbines needed to be manufactured, basically each one by hand. There was, in that pre-computer-control era, no way to automate the process of making the engine parts. 

But then the what-if machine kicks in: The cars didn't need to use gasoline, or even petroleum products...they ran one car on tequila, and another on peanut oil. Had manufacture gone ahead, perhaps advances in technology would've speeded up computer-aided design and production. This kind of technology could've reduced carbon emissions....

Imagine a world where the car smells like a deep fryer and sounds like a jet, leaving water as its exhaust. Lost chances. The very source of all good fiction. *turns on private bubble machine*