The Car Book: The Definitive Visual History

by Giles Chapman (Editor)

A car enthusiast's dream, this ultimate history of the car takes you on a trail-blazing road trip through motoring history, featuring over 1,200 images of the world's coolest cars, engines, and marques.

From the earliest "road carriages" of the 1880s to the quad-turbocharged Bugatti Veyron, cars have evolved at an extraordinary pace over the past 130 years. Discover the people, machines, and the magic that created the perfect blend of art and engineering to turn brands such as Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, Aston Martin, and Cadillac into household names.

The Car Book showcases the most important marques and models in luscious detail, organized in categories such as sports cars, convertibles, and city compacts. It features jawdropping photographic tours of some of the most iconic cars from each era such as the Rolls Royce Silver Ghost, Ford Model T, Lamborghini Countach, and Ferrari F40, with cross-sections of key engines that explore the driving force behind them.

The Car Book is an iconic celebration of automotive design and motoring history - and the perfect gift for car lovers of all ages.

Genres: Reference, Cars, Nonfiction, History

360 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Giles Chapman is an award-winning writer and commentator on the industry, history and culture of cars. He began his career in 1984 in automotive consultancy, moving into magazine publishing in 1985. By 1991, he was editor of Classic & Sports Car, the world's best-selling classic car magazine. Since 1994, he's worked freelance across a huge variety of media. Today, he contributes to national newspapers and motoring publications, and was voted Jeep Consumer Journalist Of The Year in 2005, BCA Feature Writer Of The Year in 2008, AA Environment Writer Of The Year 2011, and Classic Writer Of The Year in 2022 as well as being shortlisted as the 2022 Royal Automobile Club Journalist Of The Year.

He's the author of almost 60 books including 'My Dad Had One Of Those' (co-written with Top Gear's Richard Porter) that was a non-fiction hardback best-seller in 2007 and has since sold almost 200,000 copies. This makes it one of the best-selling – and most popular – car books of all time.

Reviews

[Kenneth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I Really enjoyed the book because it tells you the history about cars and how history of cars started. I would recommend it to people who like books about cars.

[Ralph · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a car nut like me, this has to be one of the best books i have ever read

[Илья Лозовський · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing book. So interesting to read, it will be a great gift for car lovers or just for yourself. It contains car story from 1930-2000 and it's so lovely to read!! High recommendation.

[Darren Holbrook · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book great picture

[Sadique Istiaque · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic

[Andrew S · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The Car Book, The Definitive Visual History" is a reference book by DK Publishing. This book contains information on an unbelievable amount of cars, starting from the 1880's to 2010. Each car is represented by a side-view image and contains information about the name, origin, engine, top speed, and a short description. Some cars are explained in-depth. The book starts with the first car with an internal combustion engine; the Daimlere 1886. One of the latest cars represented in this book is the Jaguar XKR 75, made in 2010 to celebrate the company's 74th anniversary with these special edition XKRs. This book kept me flipping its pages because it made me excited to see the cars improving and changing designs every page I turn. At the end of the book, I was surprised to see the car industry's massive development in such a short period of time. After reading the whole book, I felt like I gained a great amount of knowledge on cars, especially classic cars. I would recommend this book to everyone who are into cars.