Book photos by author.
Softcover and fairly inexpensive, Brooklands Books are essentially nothing more than a gathering of road tests from old car magazines that have been reprinted together for the convenience of having them all under a single cover. The concept is a simple one, and it has been hugely successful.
Based in England, Brooklands Books was founded back in 1954 when Morgan owner John Dowdeswell was unable to find information on the Morgan he owned. After discovering an out-of-print book called The Book of the Morgan, John obtained the rights from the book’s publisher to reprint it, and the rest, as they say, is history. He then published handbooks on BSA three-wheelers and tuning English Fords.
According to the company’s history, “Soon after these early publishing ventures, having purchased a huge stack of pre-war issues of Autocar and Motor magazines, Dowdeswell realised just how much material of interest to motoring enthusiasts was disappearing almost overnight. This was when he hit on the idea of collating road tests and stories of individual makes and printing them in book form.” His first book of reprinted road tests was on Bentley, followed by Rolls-Royce, Alvis and pre-war MGs. To date, about 1,000 such books have been published.
Although British automobiles were the company’s primary focus, through the years they branched out and published reprint books on Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, and other European and Japanese makes. Then they turned their attention to American cars after obtaining reprint rights from Car and Driver, Motor Trend, Road & Track, and Sports Car Illustrated. Soon books on Buick, Chrysler, Dodge, Camaro, Corvette, Nash Metropolitan and Packard appeared – all consisting of reprinted road tests from the past. During the last decade or so books on El Camino, Firebird/Trans Am, Chevelle, Corvair and other American performance cars and classics have been added to their growing list. For bus fans, there’s a forthcoming book on Greyhound buses due out soon.
Each book runs between 100 and 150 pages in length, with all the photographs being black and white and printed on non-coated white paper. The production quality is as basic as it gets. Most of the early books had simple two-color covers while the newer versions feature a color photograph on a shiny black background. There’s also a series called the Gold Portfolio, which totals about 180 pages and features more than just old road tests. One such Gold Portfolio book is Studebaker 1947-1966, and can be found on Amazon from $8.99 used or $19.95 and up new. Most Brooklands Books are in the $7 to $20 range, with the latest new offerings costing between $26 and $32. Through the years I’ve seen many used copies being sold at Carlisle and Hershey for a mere $5 each.
With Brooklands Books the reprinted information is the star, and the only reason why car owners and enthusiasts buy them and read them. If you want to learn all about that collector car in your garage, or the one you plan on buying – how it performs, drives, handles and all its mechanical specifications – then you will enjoy reading all the jam-packed hardcore information and insightful details that lie within.
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