With winter creeping up on many of us, and the Cobra driving season coming to an end, I thought that some of you would be interested in an excellent series of 4 books to read in the coming months.
B.S. Levy has written a fantastic series of books revolving around the birth of sports car racing in the United States. Bert has taken actual historical information surrounding many racing events, including Watkins Glen, Elkhart Lake, Sebring, Bonneville and many others, and weaved a fictional story with characters around these and many more racing events and the actual drivers of the time.
When I started reading his 1st book, “The last Open Road” I was not really aware of the history of sports car racing in the USA in any great detail. I thought “The last Open Road” was just a fictional book about sports cars. After doing some research, I was actually able to cross-reference the dates, names, and events on the internet. There are fascinating references to many makes and models of cars in his book that were commonly used as race cars back then. I did some further research and was able to find photographs and histories of them all. You will also recognize many of the great drivers names in these books too; Briggs Cunningham, Phil Hill to name a few. Some of the characters names and club names have been replaced I think, probably because Bert occasionally drives other people’s cars at various track events (sponsored by different sanctioning bodies) and he wants to keep all his “options open” if you know what I mean…
The second book is called “Montezuma’s Ferrari” which is a continuation of his first book. The third book is called, “The Fabulous Trashwagon” it’s also a continuation. The last book in the series is “Toly’s Ghost” that’s the next one I plan to read over the winter…(if I get it for Christmas)
You can read about these books at Bert’s website:
www.lastopenroad.com
Bert is the author and publisher of the series, and I highly recommend ordering them directly from him. He’ll even personally sign them for you before shipping them out…
I stopped by his office to pickup a copy of the 2nd book a month or two ago….he's definitely a car guy - car stuff all over the place…
You’ll find yourself reading till all hours of the night and then searching the internet for more info and photos…I sure did….4 stars from me for these books…
Blas
Some interesting reading material:
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