The Complete Book of Formula One: All Cars and Drivers Since 1950 Motorbooks International ( November, 2003 ) Book Our Price : £ 24.49 List Price : £ 34.99 You save £10.5 (30% off) Prices subject to change. usually dispatched within 24 hours.

Superb photographic reference

Now this is a weird one. Respected journos Simon Arron (at Motorsport News and Autosport for many years) and Mark "brother of Warren and the bloke who should have Nigel Roebucks job" Hughes (also of the Beano) have teamed up to produce the ultimate photographic reference book on F1. They attempt to show a picture of every car/driver combination thats ever competed in the World Championship, and a portrait of every driver - and apart from a few very obscure ones in the 50s, they succeed pretty well. (About 30 missing out of something like 3500 driver/car combinations, many of these F2 tail-enders who only ran in one GP and none later than the early sixties). The books organised year by year, with a nice photographic survey of the years championship, and then pics of the driver/car combinations in championship order. If Fred Bloggs drove three different models of car in 1966, then they show you Fred in each of the three. You cant accuse them of being less than comprehensive. Now, theres not much new you can show about most of the famous ones, but this book really comes into its own the further down you get - its all here, private owners of customer or ex-works cars, extra works entries, one-offs, no-hopers, chancers, special-builders... theres pics of everything from AFM to Zakspeed in here. Most of the pics are very good, but some of them, probably out of the need to use substandard material to cover everything, have been fairly crudely digitally enlarged. Possibly not of interest to pure Bernie-era F1 fans, but anyone interested particularly in the 60s and 70s when there were all sorts of weird and wonderful characters popping up in bizarrely-coloured cars (check out the chocolate brown and orange Brabham John Watson used to drive!) for odd races in strange privateer cars this is the book. Its also a great photo-essay on how the F1 car has evolved over the past 50-odd years. Somewhere between coffee-table and anorak, with appeal to both ends of the spectrum. Ive spotted two errors. Pete Lovelys 1971 Lotus 69/49 hybrid is described as having a 4-cylinder Cosworth engine; in fact it used a DFV V8. On the same page (!) obscure one-off March rent-a-driver Max Jean is mis-listed as Jean Max, although this mistake is very common!

An aficiandos dream

It is a very thorough piece of work. It allows you to see complete Formula One grids have looked like over the years at a glance. Each driver/car combiation picture comes with an accurate note of the races competed in. It is great to be reminded of combinations like John Watson in a JPS Lotus. The reviews of the seasons offer some sensational pictures including an emotive one of Jackie Stewart whispering in Gilles Villeneuves ear on the Imola podium in 1982. The reviews are brief and the lack of teams from some years due to non qulaification is frustrating but overall it is an impressive referance book.

A truly great book

I recently bought this book, and it has to be said never have I encountered such detail. Firstly, it covers all german tanks and their variants developed and bulit fromm 1933-45. Secondly, it also covers any conceivable detail you cuold imagine. It tells you the manufacturer, radio set, angle and thickness of armour, even wether or not the turret was hand turned or not! Then it tells you about changes made to captured allied tanks, covers (in great detail) the radios, weapons, supplementary armour and total building amount of every german tank of world war two. Well worth buying.