The BRM saga unfolded

For a concise but entirely adequate account of the dramatic career of Raymond Mays’s V16 BRM venture with advanced racing cars, BRM V16s – How Britain’s auto makers built a Grand Prix car to beat the world, by Karl Ludvigsen (Veloce, 93 pages, 26cm x 26cm, ISBN 13-978-1845840322, £17.99) is a fascinating and full account of the building of the incredible BRM engine, with technical drawings, to the first public display of the exciting 1½-litre GP car with the screaming engine note, how Herr Neubauer came to England to see the BRM, to its dismal race failures, but the eventual lesser successes. The immense amount of data on the BRM and many other racing engines is even more impressive and valuable given the book’s low price.  156 good b&w pictures effectively back-up the text. This must be the ‘book of the year’ in my opinion.