Sports Car Racing, Endurance Car Racing and Brand Specific Car Books. How Many Do You Own? PART TWO.

October 15, 2021

#442

Gentle reader,

This is the second installment of three regarding CAR books I am selling on to new owners.

I'm 65, retired and am doing what I can to lighten the load on our kids once we are no longer living by selling off various collections.

The previous installment can be read here: The Robb Collections: Sports Car Racing, Endurance Car Racing and Brand Specific Car Books. How Many Do You Own?

The book above, which has incredible photographs of Le Mans racers from all eras is still available on eBay as are several of the other racing books. A link to my items for sale can be found at the very bottom of this page.

That chapter covered RACING books or books about car racing. The following COVERS will show you what I have added recently on eBay:

Can you tell I like Porsches? Sadly, I have only been able to buy one, a 1987 924S, a model I had not previously heard of. It was fun, but since I did not know the service history (frequent timing belt changes on the 2.5 liter Porsche engine are vital) and I found out that late model Camaro Z28s prices were very affordable, I traded it in. The salesman was so happy, he said, "Tonight, I'm driving a Porsche home!"

Written in Italy by an Italian who had unprecedented access to Ferrari's archives, cars and museum. In English.

We grew up riding in our parents VW buses. We drove all over the WEST in them, invariably crossing MOUNTAINS in them in the summer time. Never had a breakdown.

Dad snapped this photo of us as we were about to move from Kansas back to California so that he could begin his Doctoral studies. He was a Presbyterian minister and the seminary hired him to teach so our stay in California was six wonderful years. That's me on the left. middle sister next, older sister then little brother with Mom holding baby sister. 

I started out as a Chevy guy. I had at least seven of them and put a '57 V8 engine and driveline in a 1941 Plymouth Coupe.

I was eighteen or nineteen when my brother shot this photo and experimenting with parting my hair in the middle. I miss that body and that hair. I still wear Adidas.

I built models and raced slot cars as a kid and an adult. Still have a number of HO slot cars and lots of track, but nowhere to put a layout. I only have one model I built left. It is of a 1941 Plymouth Coupe which I, you guessed it, put a 1957 Chevy driveline in. I finished the model but not the real car. Our parents moved up to outside D.C. and I stayed in Richmond in my first apartment. My girlfriend's father let me store the Plymouth in his backyard and I eventually sold it.

Of all the cars in this 1:24th/1:43rd scale collection, ten of them represent cars I have owned. We had the aforementioned Camaro Z28, ours was white with 6-speed manual and T-Tops, the red/black one is a dealer promo. Next to that is an Audi TT, ours was a 2000 quattro with blue inside and out. The unpainted 1975 Monza represents one I bought for $250 with the intention of swapping it's 262 CI (4.3 liter) V8 into the 1975 Vega wagon. That never happened, but I do have that "metallic mint green" Vega dealer promo model there. Bonus points if you know what the quoted line is from. The orange Porsche 924 Turbo (I was wrong this too is a model I built) represents the 924S. The 1964 Impala SS represents my first car, it was not an SS and had a smoky 283 V8 with powerglide 2-speed automatic. To fix that, I bought a 1964 Chevelle Malibu SS convertible (hardtop dealer promo in collection) for $250 and took the 327 V8 engine out, putting it in the Impala. I should have kept the Malibu and fixed it up. I traded my '93 Ford Escort wagon to buy my wife an off-lease Chrysler Sebring JXi convertible. Ours was black, the diecast model is candy apple red and the top IS cloth and folds down and up. What's that, nine models? Oh yes, my current car is a 2005 Volvo V50 T5 Sport with M66 transmission. A wee 1:43rd scale replica of it is third from the right. I LOVE that car!

I am actively photographing and editing more CAR books and will be putting them up on eBay. I also have some other books which are not car related which you can see while there.  

Items for sale by rfcollectin | eBay

Thanks for taking the time to read my article and view my photos. I REALLY appreciate all those who have stepped forward to buy books already. 

Scott

October 15, 2021

Sports Car Racing, Endurance Car Racing and Brand Specific Car Books. How Many Do You Own?

October 2, 2021

#441

Gentle reader,

Those of you who follow my blog, (THANK YOU!) are aware that I am a lifelong car guy. Now that I am retired, many of the collections we have accrued over the decades have been finding new homes.

Over my lifetime, I have read thousands of books. Prior to our digital age, the main way most people had to read books was the check them out from the local library. Which we as a family visited weekly. Since we could not afford a set of encyclopedias, the only way to find out something was to head to the library and if necessary, ask a librarian for help.

As time went by, I have been buying many books, as far as general reading, thrift stores and the library's book sales were the best places to get them. But for most of my CAR and RACING books, I bought them new from the publisher's web sites, or via Motorbooks.com. 

For specialty books, the audience can be quite small. Thanks to the Internet, I have a acquired a nice, if modest, collection of car books. With more articles and cover photos to follow on this subject as the GROUP photos below will show.

Starting with the racing books. Most are photo laden books. A few, especially the older ones are mostly text.

NOTE: If you are reading this on a PC, if you click on any photograph, a second window will open over the article with ALL of the photos shown as thumbnails at the bottom and the one you clicked on full size. You may either click on or use the arrow keys to go through all the photos. How it works on a "device" I do not know. I purposely do not have any.

Above are all of the car books which I have SO FAR, photographed and edited.

These, above and below are ones I have not gotten to photographing yet.

I purpose built the shelf shown above with the as-yet-unseen-in-this-article top shelf made to house and display diecast cars. 

This scene is from way back in 2008. Much has changed since. All the larger scale cars are now in two upright shelves with Lexan covers. PLUS, ALL the books on photography and camera collecting were sold after I stopped collecting and sold off most of my cameras.

That brings me to the reason I have written THIS article. I am selling off almost all of my car books. I'm retired and no one in my family has the passion for cars and racing I have. SO, all of the car books shown below WILL be for sale on eBay under my seller ID: rfcollectin Items for sale by rfcollectin | eBay

Some of the books, I purchased, thumbed through and put on the shelf. Just as cars are meant to be driven and shoes are made to be worn, books are meant to be read.

ALL of these RACING books will be available for sale starting on Sunday, October 3, 2021 at 9:00 PM 2100 Hours, EST Eastern Standard Time. 

I will show in this article only the covers. If something needs a little clarifying, I will caption those images.

This is an official Ford Motor Company publication from the late 1960's. Very rare.

This book details EVERY Ford GT car made, by chassis number, and if it was raced, it's racing history. For GT40 lovers, this is a gold mine.

This is reprints of English language magazine articles (mostly from the UK) for all those years coverage of the 24 Hours of Le Mans races.

Incredible photography in this coffee table book. 

When I was a teen we lived in Denver, Colorado, I had talked Mom into taking my brother and I to the races. There was no road racing around Denver then, but south of the city near Castle Rock, was the Continental Divide Raceway. An OLD course, then CDR was only being used for drag racing. This book covers road course in north America that no longer exist.

This too is a reprint of English language articles about these racers.

This book was written for older kids so that they could learn about the many types of  car racing at the time.

This books is a must-have for those interested in these fantastic years of endurance racing.

First edition of the late-Sir Stirling Moss' own words about winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans in the late 1950's.

An excellent look at what many consider THE best years of Trans-Am racing in north America.

So, that is all of my RACING books, as I wrote, ALL of these are being offered for sale on eBay starting on October 3rd, 2021 at 9:00 PM here: Items for sale by rfcollectin | eBay

Thank you SO much for reading my humble blog, it is appreciated SO MUCH, and I am humbled by your kind words and comments either here, below, or on Facebook.

Scott

October 2, 2021

#441