Books
The Complete Car Modeller 2, by Gerald Wingrove (revised edition). Haynes / Foulis, £14.99.
Gerald Wingrove is a genius builder of incredibly detailed, very accurate scale-model cars. He has now let those modelmakers who have long admired his skill and dedication into his intimate secrets. That is, if they buy his book The Complete Car Modeller, which was published by New Cavendish Books in 1978 and which Haynes/Foulis of Yeovil have brought out in a completely new version, which goes step-by-step into the making of the Weinberger Bugatti Royale. The workshop tools, and the full gambit of making this fabulous model, chassis, engine, bodywork, and finishing the assembled 1/5th reproduction of the Ludwig Weinberger Royale form the text.
From this book you also learn about the real car and see in fine colour-plates what your model Bugatti will look like, assuming you can acquire the Wingrove skills. In his foreword Lord Montagu of Beaulieu says of the author: “Over the years I have watched with admiration how he has perfected his craft and has rightly become world famous as a model maker of Automobiles.” W B
Rolls-Royce The Derby Phantoms, by Lawrence Dalton. RREC Ltd, £30.00.
Besides running a highly efficient club for the owners of all Rolls-Royce cars and the Derby and later Bentleys, the R-R EC has a magnificent headquarters, where records are kept of every aspect of RollsRoyce history and technical knowledge that it is possible to gather together and that task is likely to be endless in its pursuit of knowledge. Already it covers individual build-histories of more than 100,000 cars, 30,000 photographs and 30,000 drawings. For those on the outside, so to speak, there are the great number of R-R books, some of pictorial elegance, others consolidating the growing information obtainable pertaining to ‘The Best Car in the World’.
It is good to note that the R-R EC is itself now continuing this publishing task. Its latest offering is another of those beautiful, glossy-paged works by Lawrence Dalton, literally packed with fine pictures of Rolls-Royces and their coachwork, a veritable mine of data for those who need it and especially for those who are interested in the bodywork put on these chassis along the years. The book we are now describing is devoted to the Derby Phantoms and not only depicts almost every variation of the bodywork on these great cars, but lists them all by chassis number, coachwork builder, first owners, and where known, registration numbers, with technical notes.
That alone makes this an outstanding reference-work. But there is more – reproductions of the R-R catalogue for the new Phantom, P2 and V12 P3 cars, and technical descriptions and road-test reports from the motor journals of contemporary times, The Motor predominating. How well I remember, even though more interested in sports-cars such as the 36/220 hp Mercedes-Benz and the 4 1/2-litre Bentley, turning to these reports as a boy with that awe which, quite rightly, surrounds all Rolls-Royce motor cars. It is now possible to get more than a whiff of such nostalgia from this and Lawrence Dalton’s other splendid R-R books, in deluxe presentation, before putting them in the bookcase as invaluable reference works. And when you feel depressed you can recall a more stable past by studying the seemingly endless collection of beautifully-presented photo graphs. W B
Geoffrey Rootes’ Dream for Linwood, by Robert J Allan. Bookmarque Publishing, £13.95.
To supplement, as it were, the recent book on the Hillman Imp, by David and Peter Henshaw, Bookmarque has brought out a collection of some 160 photographs of the Linwood factory, rescued from a skip, together with Rootes Company documentation, and has combined this with some further inside information about the Imp and its ill-fated Scottish production.
No Imp enthusiast should forego this 112-page coverage: only 1000 copies are being printed. W B