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Ultimate Classic Car Book

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  • List Price: $30.00
  • Studio: DK ADULT
  • Avg. Customer Rating: 3.5 Stars
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Product Details

Editorial Reviews

Product Description: Detailing more than one hundred classic cars with close-up gallery photographs, a comprehensive history highlights each model's production figures, competition successes, mechanical and body modifications, and more. 50,000 first printing.

Customer Reviews

 
signed inside
Reviewer: Jennifer Dray (Cleveland, OH), Date of review: December 16, 2008
Avg. Customer Rating: 2 Stars
It was in good condition but i wanted to give it as a xmas gift. But, it was signed to someone else inside. So, now I cant
What is a classic car?
Reviewer: Eli Post (Whidbey Island, WA), Date of review: June 17, 2008
RAvg. Customer Rating: 1 Star

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

What is a classic car? And which of them should be featured in a book titled the ULTIMATE CLASSIC CAR BOOK?

The book claims to have "gathered the most desirable of the world's great cars" but of the hundreds of makes and models that the Classic Car Club of America recognizes as a classic ("a fine or distinctive automobile, either American or foreign built, produced between 1925 and 1948") not one is featured in ULTIMATE CLASSIC CAR. Not even the universally acclaimed Cord 810 Phaeton that American Heritage magazine selected as "The Single Most Beautiful American Car" is included. If your interest is vintage--from highly sought marquees such as Auburn, Franklin, Packard, Pierce-Arrow and Stutz to Detroit's most familiar icons such as the Ford Model T and A--you are out of luck. In fact, except for the 1934 Citroen Avant, no cars manufactured prior to World War Two are to be found in the book.

If classic for you means muscle the ULTIMATE CLASSIC CAR BOOK has the Barracuda, Charger and GTO but omits the Challenger, Coronet, Cougar and many others. In 1990 Car and Driver magazine selected the ten best muscle cars of all time, but of the ten, only the Pontiac GTO makes it into the ULTIMATE CLASSIC CAR BOOK.

Regardless of the model year or type of vehicle you will not find any AMC, Chrysler, De Soto, Kaiser, Lincoln, Mercury, Nash, Oldsmobile, or Studebaker cars profiled in the book. Of the 90 cars featured in ULTIMATE CLASSIC CAR only 16 are American made. Plymouth gets two pages for one of its cars, while Citroen gets ten. In the book's 224 pages only European sport cars are reasonably represented.

Dorling Kindersley (DK) publishes many beautiful photograph filled books and ULTIMATE CLASSIC CAR is no exception--but this classic car book is far from being the ultimate and will surely disappoint anyone fascinated in America's great venerable cars.
Beautiful book although it doesn't live up to its title.
Reviewer: NoWireHangers (Sweden), Date of review: June 26, 2006
Avg. Customer Rating: 4 Stars

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

This book is very beautiful. It has great pictures of each car from different angles, a short description of each car and lots of comments about certain details.

Although this is a very nice book, it doesn't quite live up to its title, for a couple of reasons. First of all, the descriptions for each car is quite short so if you're interested in some specific cars, you'll need to look elsewhere for more complete information.

The other reason is the choice of cars included in the book, as well as excluded. It's obviously very difficult to choose among all the classic cars in history, but here, the term "classis car" seems to have a vague defenition. Here are some cars that are undoubtedly classics because they are of great historical importance, such as Mini Cooper, Citroen 2CV, some that are classics because they are among the most sought after exclusive cars in the world, such as Bentley, Rolls Royce Silver Cloud, Lamborghini Countach, Ferrari 365, etc. But there are also those that don't seem to be classics at all, that the writer himself says are bad, like Maserati Kyalami and Daimler Dart. How come these are included when certain other classics are excluded? I also wonder why there are no pictures of the early Lamborghini Countach but only the anniversary model, and why did they chose late convertible models of classics such as Morris Minor and Volkswagen?

These are just minor flaws and this is a very good book that I'm glad I own. But don't buy it expecting an "ultimate classic car book".
Beautiful Book, But Doesn't Live Up to It's Title
Reviewer: Greg Robertson (Historic Quincy, MA), Date of review: March 09, 2006
Avg. Customer Rating: 3 Stars

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

I thoroughly enjoyed looking at everything contained in Quentin Wilson's "The Ultimate Classic Car Book," but what it contains doesn't even come close to earning it the title, "Ultimate."

Don't get me wrong, it's a very good book and may well be worth your $18 (or whatever you can get it for "Used"). But as a person who owns a classic car and has been active in classic car circles for several years, a book doesn't earn the "Ultimate" designation when it doesn't include the bullet-nosed 1950 or '51 Studebaker, a 1913 Stutz, the Tucker, a '41 Lincoln Zephyr, a '55 Plymouth Belvedere, a '57 Chevy Nomad, or several others widely recognized as classics.

Yes, I realize that my little list there is heavily skewed to American cars, but Wilson's book is VERY heavily skewed to include more models than necessary from Rolls-Royce/Bentley, BMW, Datsun, MG, and a couple of others. Again, don't misunderstand -- those are all great cars that he has included. I simply don't think you can include so many of those, ignore other obvious classics that many of us would like to learn and see more about, and still call your book "Ultimate".

I know I'm obsessing a bit, but if I only had $20 to spend on such a book and bought it over the Internet, I would feel a little cheated upon seeing how much it leaves out. Just make sure you review it thoroughly above so that your expectations are on target.
NICE BOOK SLIGHT ERROR
Reviewer: MARIO , Date of review: August 15, 2004
Avg. Customer Rating: 3 Stars

1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

STAR OF THE SCREEN
ON PAGE 92 WHERE BULLITT AND THE CHARGER ARE MENTIONED, IT EXPLAINS HOW THE CHARGER ALSO HAD MAJOR ROLES IN THE 1970s CULT MOVIE >VANISHING POINT. AND THE AMERICAN TELEVISION SERIES>THE DUKES OF HAZZARD.

THE CAR THAT PLAYED A MAJOR ROLE IN VANISHING POINT IS IN FACT A "CHALLENGER" NOT A CHARGER AS INDICATED.

FOR SOMEONE WHO IS DOING RESEARCH OR LOOKING TO LEARN ABOUT CARS AND MOVIES, THAT BIT OF INFORMATION IS SPECIFICALLY INACCURATE.