Vintage Book Reviews by Club Historian, Vic Larsen

Fast cars and wild times:
the beginning of the Sport Car as we new it

I have just finished reading three books by Burt Levy that takes us back to the early 50s and the beginning of the sport car era in the United States. I can still remember in ‘49 or ‘50 the first MGTC and Jaguar 120 that I saw. Till that moment I can’t say I had ever seen or knew of a foreign car.

 After WW2 these cars became a common sight, at least in California that is. I began hanging around the foreign car places like British Motors in Burlingame making a pest of myself and usually getting thrown out. It wasn’t long before I saw my first sport car races. I can remember seeing Phil Hill racing in a White 120 in San Francisco at Golden Gate Park. It is not hard to imagine how exciting these cars were compared to the everyday American vehicles on the highways. This trilogy by Bert Levy brings all this back.

In The Last Open Road we are introduced to the main character Buddy Palumbo a nineteen year old aspiring mechanic and gas pump jockey at the Sinclair Station in Passaic NJ. When ‘Big’ Ed Baumstein, owner of the largest junkyard in Jersey [think Tony Soprano], comes Tooling into the station in his brand new white XK-120 Buddies life is changed forever. Burt’s style of writing is a brash and in your face style that at first put me off; for maybe two pages and then I was hooked. This tale takes us through the historical events of the time through the eyes of young Buddy [a mirror image of the authors beginning before he became a noted editor and columnist of our most popular sport car magazines] to the famous races and venues of the time. These books are a very interesting fictional story laid upon history of the people and the cars of the period. Montezuma’s Ferrari ultimately takes Buddy and big ED to Mexico for La Carrea and a wild ride I is. I remember this race and it is well documented. The race ran the length of Mexico on the unprepared roadways of that time. Hard to believe but Lincoln had a team in the manufacturers category and won with their new 52s. Of course Buddy and his crazy Mexican driver in Big Ed’s Ferrari were up against the Germans and the new SLRs; and so tale goes on. The Fabulous Trashwagon brings us to the coming of age for young Buddy and the responsibilities of family and fortune that change his life forever.

If I have wetted your appetite for this stuff check out the website at www.lastopenroad.com and read the first chapter of the third book The Fabulous Trashwagon and also checkout the wonderful covers by Road & Track’s Robert Gillespie. To purchase the books go to Amazon or Barnes & Noble for the best buys. I usually go for the used books and have never received anything but a brand new one. If you didn’t come of age in the 50’s as I did you can now go back and see what a hot piece of machinery those old Jags were.