Ford GT 40

by Trevor Legate ISBN 1 903706 11 4 Published by Veloce Publishing, £45.00

If there’s anything new in this book, I missed it. The oft-told story is there, but there are no revealing insights or quotations from the main players. Pictures are plentiful, but the layout’s crude; photographs overlap and period publicity material is poorly reproduced.

Legate begins with Shelby and the Cobras and goes right up to the ‘run-on’ cars, as well as discussing the huge replica market, but he throws away a historian’s objectivity by describing one replica as “virtually a GT 40, lacking only an original chassis number”. Replicas can be well engineered, but they are still not real, which should be the defining view in any marque history. Included are chassis histories, which though not comprehensive may serve as quick reference.

Gordon Cruickshank