The book with a power boost

Three big hardback volumes in a slipcase, comprising 1960 pages and 665,000 words, illustrated by 3584 photographs, technical drawings and cutaways. Cripes. This is a proper monster. Power Unleashed represents the best part of a life’s work on an apparent supercharging obsession for respected author, historian and former executive for GM, Fiat and Ford, Karl Ludvigsen.

In his preface, he pinpoints January 30 1955 as his first active involvement in chasing blown power boost solutions, in a proposal he submitted for a sports car during his studies of industrial design at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute. Some of his thoughts then found their way into an article written for Sports Car Illustrated in July 1958 – but it was an article for Automobile Quarterly in 1970 entitled The origins of supercharging where the seed for this work was sown. “So, 40 years [later], I decided to finish the job,” he writes. That was 2010. Here’s the result.

The three volumes work chronologically, albeit with some overlap. Volume 1 covers the 1890s to the 1950s, Volume 2 the ’30s to the ’70s and Volume 3 the ’70s to the present day. It’s a sprawling mass of subject matter, which includes blown solutions for the road as well as the dizzying array of competition examples, with a hefty chunk of Volume 1 dedicated to aircraft too.

The structure is loosely thematic, with chapters divided by nationality, make or by specific technical innovation. Unapologetically dense in detail and written in a tone that at times verges on the academic, navigation is harder than it could have been. In essence, this is an encyclopaedia, a reference work to dip into. Few will read these volumes from front cover to back, in search for a single, flowing narrative. Perhaps the structure could have reflected that. Instead, judicious use of the indices is a must.

The level of research on obscurities and curios, as well as automotive history’s most obvious ‘blown’ examples, is astonishing. Deep into Volume 3, after diverting sections on Porsche’s 1970s turbo obsessions, Renault’s groundbreaking Formula 1 engines, Ferrari’s Damascene conversion and so much more, we land upon Keith Duckworth, that “dyed-in-the-wool disbeliever in turbocharging”, as Ludvigsen describes him. Indeed, Duckworth considered blown solutions a form of cheating the regulations in motor sport, only grudgingly accepting turbos breathing fresh life into Cosworth engines even as they were lapping up victories in IndyCar and beyond. Although it didn’t stop him pursuing a canny turbo F1 project using an infinitely variable drive gear, dubbed the BB, which died on the vine. The author also records Ken Tyrrell’s initial encouragement of Renault’s F1 adventures despite his later well-known antipathy for turbos. If only both were here now to consider Ludvigsen’s masterpiece.

The painstaking research behind the words is matched by technical drawings and detailed photography. As a whole, Power Unleashed is the landmark achievement it was surely always designed to be. It’s Ludvigsen’s Sistine Chapel.

Power Unleashed: Trailblazers Who Energised Engines with Supercharging and Turbocharging
Karl Ludvigsen
Evro Publishing, £395
ISBN 9781910505373