Seventies Motor Racing book review: Photo collection meets cultural commentary

You can tell from the pale orange endpapers that this is going to be presented with some style, and it is. Palawan style, with groovy covers and a smart box case. Essentially a photo collection, it’s drawn from the archive left by Franco Lini, reporter and photographer for Auto Italia on all fields of motor racing through the ’70s and briefly Ferrari’s sporting director. And as one who knew him from 1966 and now keeper of his archive, Doug Nye is well placed to introduce us to the man and provide knowledgeable and generous captions to over 480 photos in this muscle-testing volume.

But that’s only part of it: as a companion to the beefy photo book there’s a slimmer volume which doesn’t mention motor racing at all. Instead it’s an essay on the cultural and intellectual aspects of the 1970s, and if it didn’t carry through the design of its companion book you would never imagine they’re a pair.

Written by novelist and cultural commentator Michael Bracewell, it’s meant to give a context to the decade illustrated in the main work, but it’s a million miles from the average motor racing article. Sample: “Throughout the 1970s an exhausted deliquescence prevailed, creating a depressed if atmospheric theatre of endings.” It’s a heady culture casserole – Brian Eno, Germaine Greer, the Oz trial, Ralph Steadman, Bertolt Brecht, Sex Pistols, David Bowie. It’s writing you’d expect to see in culture mag Frieze or in the catalogue at Hackney’s hippest gallery. Is it interesting? I guess so. It highlights patterns that you don’t see when you’re living through the era. Does it add to a book about motor racing? Questionable, except to remind us that even racing takes place in a wider world. Doug, too, touches on this momentous decade in his introduction, but he displays a crisp enthusiast attitude – ignore the wider world and “close one’s eyes to boring, oppressive reality – just concentrate on the next race”.

So, back to car pictures. Lini would travel to Indy, Can-Am, Tour Auto or F3, but it’s Formula 1 which makes the bulk of this book. In those easier days he became a popular part of the travelling circus that accompanied the sport, allowing him access to those off-duty moments that tell us much more than pictures of cars on track – though there are of course plenty of those. For example, Bernie Ecclestone confronting a Dutch FIA official, or James Hunt reading The Dogs of War.

It’s divided into year blocks, each opened with Doug’s succinct summary of the season – handy, and topped by brief notes of what was happening in politics, literature, art and sport, which frankly manages what the culture volume does while eating fewer trees.

Like the Branger book, The Last Eye Witness, that we featured last month, this scores with Doug’s in-depth knowledge in the extensive captions – a Chevron on the Targa Florio may be an also-ran but Doug knows all about its local driver, and elsewhere he’s as likely to slip in a bit of Italian constitutional history as team details.

Favourites? A colourful 1971 Buenos Aires 1000Kms grid, an outdoor driver discussion under a Kyalami tree or the russet woods behind Watkins Glen with Niki Lauda’s Ferrari bellowing towards us. Not the sharpest shot; in fact it’s not the only one which is less than pinpoint. Some are surprisingly soft, but Palawan’s designer goes bold, pushing the size up to make it grainy but arty. Still, for each of those there’s another which grabs – like Merzario swapping seats with Carlos Pace, the back of Arturo’s overalls soaked with the effort of wrestling a Ferrari around the Nürburgring.

You may only read the accompanying culture volume once, but if the ’70s was your era, you’ll find yourself dipping back into the main course often.

Seventies Motor Racing
Franco Lini with Doug Nye
Palawan Press, from £400

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Mclaren: the road cars 2010-2024

Kyle Fortune

As author Kyle Fortune, a motoring journalist of 25 years, states, “It’s rare to have the opportunity to witness the birth and growth of a car company.” From MP4-12C to 750S, Fortune, who had access to McLaren’s press archive and a swathe of key personnel, has a command of his subject that ought to be rewarded with a Mastermind winner’s Caithness glass bowl. Details and associated images of the company’s Special Operations output are particularly jaw-dropping. The art deco X-1 one-off of 2012 is crazy, while the P1 GTR in Senna-era McLaren livery brings exaggerated nods of appreciation: “With approval from the Senna family this was christened ‘Beco’, a name that Ayrton’s parents called him,” Fortune writes. It’s interesting to learn that musician George Harrison asked for his F1 to be colour-matched to an aubergine. LG

Schiffer Publishing, £59.99
ISBN 9780764367311

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Fast Fords

Jeremy Walton

Name any fast Ford from hot Anglia to 4WD rallycross Capri to Supervan, GT40, works RS500 – in his 50 years as a journalist Jeremy Walton has tested or raced it – he was a rapid track pilot, driving saloons and many a Capri, and when we had a track test to do JW was frequently our man. I still remember drooling over his Lancia Stratos report in MS long before I joined the mag. So there’s plenty of material for these memoirs of his times with the Blue Oval; he was also a Ford PR man for some years, and he’s the precision driver in many TV and magazine ads from the ’70s and ’80s. Some great tales here: hair-raising helicopter shoots, gate-crashing a BMW press launch with a Cosworth, racing a Capri in the Spa 24 Hours and two-wheeling Supervan 3 round Silverstone. A cheerful cross between an insider memoir and a history of go-faster Fords, it’s a fun read. GC

Evro Publishing, £60
ISBN 9781910505830