Cars That Never Were

By The Editors of Consumer Guide and Consumer Guide

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0785306854
• ISBN13: 9780785306856
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: Consumer Guide Books Pub
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 3.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 13.0" x 1.3" x 10.5"

Customer Reviews

This is my all time favorite book

I can't tell you how wonderful this book is. It offers photos, drawings, history and interviews with the principal personalities involved with some of the most wonderful and some of the most horrible automobiles of all time. Going through this book makes you either crave what was never produced, or better understand why some weren't. References are cited; research and writing is done extremely well. There are witty chapter headings, such as "The Cars That Couldn't Have Saved Studebaker" and "A Case of the Willys". There are insights into the organizational politics and the artistic techiques that go on in the automotive industry. You also get to peek in on the very individualistic stylists and power/money hungry executives. I've read the book dozens of times, and now I share it with my kids. But the best ting of all is the pictures.

Excellent coverage of a subject insufficiently written about

For those of us interested in the history of the automobile as "rolling sculpture" this is invaluable. We get insights of the way the design studios were actually thinking and dreaming in the context of the time. We get to see the fusion of contemporary design fashion combined with non commercial outreach. Whether this coincided with the practicality of contemporaneous production feasibilities was of course irrelevant. These concept cars such as the Buick Y or the Dynatron are described not just from the aesthetic point of view but also clearly from the corporate publicity aspirational side. We get to see what GM , Ford, etc dreamt of being as opposed to the mundane needs of day to day reality. The photos alone make this book worth the price. One could allways wish for more but this is a very fair balance between well written , clear text and the visual.