Cars: Freedom, Style, Sex, Power, Motion, Colour, Everything - Hardcover

Bayley, Stephen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1840915048 ISBN 13: 9781840915044

Publisher: Conran, 2009

Synopsis

The ultimate car book-a love letter to the most beautiful 86 cars ever manufactured by an award -winning car columnist and important cultural and design critic.
The story of the car is the story of how objects of industry became a medium of artistic expression. Memorials of our tastes, yearnings, and capabilities, these machines have layers of meaning and can (as Henry Ford knew) be read like a book . . if only you know how.
Stephen Bayley, car columnist, design authority and cultural commentator knows how, and in this opinionated volume, presents a spectacular study of achievements in car design. Bayley's 86 favorite designs range from the 1908 Ford Model T, to the 1961 Jaguar E-Type, to the 2003 BMW 5. All presented in chronological order, each automobile also makes a statement about the national character of the country of manufacture.
In addition, hundreds of ravishing photographs (including full-body, interior and detail shots) and an elegant slipcase, make CARS the perfect gift book for all car enthusiasts and design aficionados.

About this title

About the Author:

Stephen Bayley is one of the world's best known commentators on modern culture. In 1989 he was made a Chevalier de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France's top artistic honor, by the French Minister of Culture. Since 1990 Stephen Bayley has been a design consultant working on imaginative communications projects for Ford, Jaguar, Fiat, Audi and BMW amongst others, and wrote the creative strategy for Mercedes-Benz' advertisements. He has written for Car magazine for the past 25 years. Stephen was awarded PPA Columnist of the Year for his car column in GQ (which ran for about eight years) and he wrote very popular regular car columns for The Daily Telegraph and Management Today. He is also well- known as an outspoken commentator on art and design and contributes regularly to The Times, The Daily Mail, The OBserver, The Los Angeles Times, High Life, as well as many trade and professional publications.

Review:

Have you ever heard of a Lincoln Zephyr? Turn to page 42 of this luxurious book, and see for yourself the 1935 model of that extraordinarily styled automobile. Style is what this oversized beauty of a book (which is itself the epitome of style) is all about. Accomplished automotive writer Bayley begins his breathtaking album of stunning black-and-white photographs with the bold statement: "Car design is one of the distinctive, even defining, art forms of the twenty-first century." Further, he argues, car design is "our age's singular contribution to cultural history." Each car [was] selected because it "changed the conventional wisdom, lifted the game, raised the bar" in terms of style... Check out, in particular, the 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz. Wow! American opulence at its most dramatic.

—Brad Hooper, Booklist

About this edition

• Publisher: Conran
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1840915048
• ISBN 13: 9781840915044
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 384