[QUOTE="C.R. Krieger"]Best racing books, hands down, are Bert Levy's trilogy of the story of Buddy Palumbo:
Lots more choices for best racing videos, but I think Steve McQueen's "LeMans" edges out Jim Garner in "Grand Prix" - but not by much.
Anyone who mentions "Two Lane Blacktop" is hereby preemptively banished from this thread. (I
am allowed to do that, right?)
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE="booker535"]They're not about cars, but I really enjoy the films "On Any Sunday" vol. 1 and 2. They're kinda cheesy (made back in the early-mid 70s), but they have some really fantastic footage of motorcycle racing from all over the world.[/QUOTE]
Before I even opened up this thread I was gonna list these choices (except I happen to like Two Lane Blacktop, or at least parts of it, anyway
... there are some great vintage drag racing segments in it. I also like American Graffiti.) I bought the B.S. Levy books from the man himself, he's quite a character.
On Any Sunday came out about the time I started riding motorcycles myself, so it doesn't seem so cheesy to me
. It's interesting to see Mert Lawill (who had the #1 AMA number plate at the time) driving himself around the country with his mechanic and bike in a Ford Econoline van.
One of these days I'm going to buy the remastered DVD of the film short Rendezvous, it's the movie of that guy tearing through the middle of Paris at 5am in his Ferrari. I have a murky VHS copy of it now.
Another book (or actually, set of books) I'd recommend is Smokey Yunick's biography. It's written in a kind of weird, stream-of-consciousness fashion but it's pretty interesting.
My all time favorite automotive author is Peter Egan, the columnist for Road and Track and Cycle World magazines. Somewhere around here I still have a copy of the Cycle magazine with his first published article - it came out in about 1976 I believe.
