As government
regulations threaten to engineer much of the character out of modern cars, as our roads become congested and
dangerous and the air we breathe gets more contaminated, we can look back to the "classic" era of the 1950s and 1960s as the romantic golden age of the motor car. In europe, more and better mass-produced cars were seen as a liberating force for families previously restricted to public transpoet. In North America, cars simply got bigger,
reflecting the wealth and confidence of the most powerfull nation on earth. Traffic was yet to reach its often gridlocked state of today, petrol was much cheaper and, in Britain at least, there were no speed restrictions on the newly-opened motorways.
Before the mergers and close downs of the 1970s, buyers could choose from a far wider range of makes reflecting national identities. The Japanese motor industry, later so dominant, was not even a speck on the horizon in the 195s and 1960s. In engineering and styling, too, cars tended to be more varied and individual-you could tell an Austin from a Morris, a Vauxhall from a Volvo without having to look at the badge. Safety was optional: it was speed glamour and style that sold cars, and in the 50s and early60s nobody had even begun to think of the exhast-emission
regulations that would strangle power outputs in the 70s. Back then, the motorcar was our servant. Now , through its very proliferation, it has become our master. In this part of the book we celebrate the glory days and beyond, and the marvellous machines which rode through them, fixing in our cultural consciousness a picture of the ideal motor-the classic car.
Fantastic book with exellent pictures of classic cars to reminisce in our past.