Legendary Car Engines: Inner Secrets of the World's 20 Best

Rating:
Summary: An engine book that's a good read and a great look.
Review: Here is a book for your coffee table. In fact, if you're into engines, it belongs on the top of the stack. One reason is Tim Andrew's stylish and distinctive image work. Many will recognized Andrews as a regular shooter for Automobile Magazine and his stunning photography of the engines in this book is reason enough to buy it.

Readers in the U.S. may not recognize the Author, but John Simister is a noted automotive journalist in Europe having been on the staff of Motor, Carweek and Car, all publications widely read overseas. Currently, Simister freelances to various automotive magazines, is a contributor on Britain's Channel 4 and does book projects such as this one.

Simister's extensive technical expertise on European engine history and technology is demonstrated throughout this book. Some of the most important automotive engines ever to come out of the U.K. such as the Jaguar XK and the Aston Martin in-line six are covered in great detail and in Simister's accessible style. This detail and style are bolstered by Andrew's studio image work.

While there is coverage of a smattering of engines from Italy, Germany, the U.S. and one from France, this book is focused primarily on significant car engines from U.K. It follows that this book is a must-have for British car enthusiasts. A limitation of this book may disappoint those hooked by cover image of a modified Small-Block Chevrolet and expecting the chapters of engines from the United States to rival that of British engines. Unfortunately, that content is average, at best. Three American engines are profiled: the Chrysler Hemi, the Small-Block Chevrolet and the small-block Ford. The Hemi's inclusion is appropriate and the coverage is well-researched.

The Chevrolet chapter contains inaccuracies. For instance, the Author claims a 1989 Small-Block called "350 H.O." was first to break the post-emissions era, 300-hp barrier, however no GM vehicle was ever produced with that engine. Such an honor actually belongs to the 300-hp, 1992 LT1 engine which the author, confusingly, also credits with breaking that barrier.

More incorrect information is dispensed in a brief discussion of the LT5 engine installed in '90-'95 Corvette ZR1s. <u>Legendary Car Engines</u> characterizes it as a DOHC, all-aluminum version of the Small-Block. Yes, it had DOHC and, yes, it was aluminum, but the LT5 shared no parts and no architecture, other than bore centers, with the Small-Block. That the LT5 was designed by Lotus Engineering in England, developed jointly by GM and Lotus and set a World Endurance Speed Record in 1990 which stood for a decade, will have some wondering why that engine didn't get an accurately-written chapter of it's own.

As for the Small-Block Ford, upon reading what it took for engines to get into the book, one might wonder why it was picked. The Ford V8s which should have been profiled were the Flatheads, the only U.S. V8s, other than the Chevy Small-Block, which changed the way people in the States think about cars and made the V8 engine an American cultural icon. Author Simister claims a reason for the SB Ford's existence was to "dominate 1960's motorsport." That statement is inaccurate because the small-block Ford, while used in competition, never dominated. Perhaps the Mr. Simister had his Blue-Ovals mixed-up. The engine Ford used to dominate '60s motorsport was the FE-series, big-block, 427 which (at the order of Henry Ford II, who intended to rub Enzo Ferrari's nose "in it" after his offer to buy Ferrari was rebuffed) won LeMans in 1966 (a 1-2-3 finish that year) and 1967 in Ford GT Mk2s and Mk4s respectively, as well as winning three NASCAR Grand National Championships in 1965, 1966, 1968 and 1969.

<u>Legendary Car Engines</u> is a pretty good, coffee-table book, mainly for its rich visual appeal and outstanding insight to engines in British cars, but as a work covering the inner secrets of the best American engines; it comes-up a little short.