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Legendary Car Engines: Inner Secrets of | 
 enlarge | Author: John Simister
Publisher: Motorbooks
Category: Book
List Price: $34.95
Buy Used: $1.00
You Save: $33.95 (97%)
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Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 745359
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 160
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.6
Dimensions (in): 10.2 x 10.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 0760319413
Dewey Decimal Number: 629
EAN: 9780760319413
ASIN: 0760319413
Publication Date: April 30, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: Tears on dust jacket; Creased cover; Some dirt; the rest in good shape!
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Product Description
In Legendary Car Engines, John Simister expertly dissects twenty of the greatest powerplants. With photos by Automobile Magazine contributor Tim Andrew and illustrations by the late, great Bob Freeman, it looks as good as it reads. - "Speed Reading" Automobile Magazine, October 2004This book examines the 20 best road-car engines ever: the most tuneful, the most beautiful, the most significant, the most highly-prized. A car's engine is its heart and its soul. It gives a car its voice and its muscle. Some engines do this so well they seem like living things. But which are they? The words reveal who designed them, and the how, when, and why, while Tim Andrews' fabulous photography captures the familiar face and the hidden depths. Discover the engine's design features, and why they matter. Find out which is the world's most prolific engine, which began as a fire-pump, and which has components that are reversible. Discover things you never knew about engine technology. John Simister gets to the heart of these celebrated power plants and describes them as he might describe old friends. Only the master of his subject could handle so complex a subject with so light a touch.
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| Customer Reviews:
Great but not quite perfect October 5, 2008
S. J. Moore (Christchurch, New Zealand)
An excellent book for anyone interested in the engines that powered some of the most legendary cars in history. Not merely exotic and thoroughbred engines are covered but more prosaic examples as well. I hope this book will be the first of a series because a single volume cannot do justice to all the notable motors out there. Special praise must go to Tim Andrew for his photography, which is of a very high standard.
Criticisms of the book are nitpicking but there are quite a few; there are just enough typo's to be annoying, some of the captions don't match the photographs, the font used for the captions and insets is almost unreadable, author Simister waxes a bit too lyrical for a book that will be read by non-poets and lastly, there are no cutaway drawings!
 Absolutely Beautiful August 23, 2007
J. M. Herr (Lancaster, PA United States)
While not as deeply technical as some other offerings, Simister more than makes up for it with huge, clear pictures that really draws the reader into the beauty of the engine. Each engine's story is approached more as a biography than an engineering study (though there is a lot of information provided) which seems to make the masterpieces come alive. From the delicately-finned Alfa Romeo to the solidly-cast Rolls-Royce, each engine is shown in it's glory. I sincerely hope that the author considers writing a sequel.
 Something different, but that's it! October 16, 2005
Enthusiast (Stuttgart, Germany)
15 out of 15 found this review helpful
This book is nice to read and the pictures are well done.
However, it does not really get deep into the matter. Inaccuracies in detail and the selection of the engines is not convincing in every aspect. Too much UK. However, this selection could have been limited by availability, as all engines were photographed in the UK.
Some more technical information and more precise data about where the engines have been applied would have been good.
The BMW 328 engine is declared a Bristol. That's a little bit difficult to accept as the Bristol was manufactured under license from BMW (or bought from BMW).
A Corvette ZR-1-LT5 is NOT a Chey Small Block. They have the displacement in common, that's it. A standard watercooled Porsche 911-engine has the boxer-layout in common with the photographed aircooled-engine, but not the unique features described in the text.
Nice to read for people who do not know much about this matter. Enthusiasts get dissapointed .
An engine book that's a good read and a great look. January 27, 2005
Hib Halverson (Southern California)
28 out of 28 found this review helpful
Here is a book for your coffee table. In fact, if you're into engines, it belongs on the top of the stack. One reason is Tim Andrew's stylish and distinctive image work. Many will recognized Andrews as a regular shooter for Automobile Magazine and his stunning photography of the engines in this book is reason enough to buy it.
Readers in the U.S. may not recognize the Author, but John Simister is a noted automotive journalist in Europe having been on the staff of Motor, Carweek and Car, all publications widely read overseas. Currently, Simister freelances to various automotive magazines, is a contributor on Britain's Channel 4 and does book projects such as this one.
Simister's extensive technical expertise on European engine history and technology is demonstrated throughout this book. Some of the most important automotive engines ever to come out of the U.K. such as the Jaguar XK and the Aston Martin in-line six are covered in great detail and in Simister's accessible style. This detail and style are bolstered by Andrew's studio image work.
While there is coverage of a smattering of engines from Italy, Germany, the U.S. and one from France, this book is focused primarily on significant car engines from U.K. It follows that this book is a must-have for British car enthusiasts. A limitation of this book may disappoint those hooked by cover image of a modified Small-Block Chevrolet and expecting the chapters of engines from the United States to rival that of British engines. Unfortunately, that content is average, at best. Three American engines are profiled: the Chrysler Hemi, the Small-Block Chevrolet and the small-block Ford. The Hemi's inclusion is appropriate and the coverage is well-researched.
The Chevrolet chapter contains inaccuracies. For instance, the Author claims a 1989 Small-Block called "350 H.O." was first to break the post-emissions era, 300-hp barrier, however no GM vehicle was ever produced with that engine. Such an honor actually belongs to the 300-hp, 1992 LT1 engine which the author, confusingly, also credits with breaking that barrier.
More incorrect information is dispensed in a brief discussion of the LT5 engine installed in '90-'95 Corvette ZR1s. Legendary Car Engines characterizes it as a DOHC, all-aluminum version of the Small-Block. Yes, it had DOHC and, yes, it was aluminum, but the LT5 shared no parts and no architecture, other than bore centers, with the Small-Block. That the LT5 was designed by Lotus Engineering in England, developed jointly by GM and Lotus and set a World Endurance Speed Record in 1990 which stood for a decade, will have some wondering why that engine didn't get an accurately-written chapter of it's own.
As for the Small-Block Ford, upon reading what it took for engines to get into the book, one might wonder why it was picked. The Ford V8s which should have been profiled were the Flatheads, the only U.S. V8s, other than the Chevy Small-Block, which changed the way people in the States think about cars and made the V8 engine an American cultural icon. Author Simister claims a reason for the SB Ford's existence was to "dominate 1960's motorsport." That statement is inaccurate because the small-block Ford, while used in competition, never dominated. Perhaps the Mr. Simister had his Blue-Ovals mixed-up. The engine Ford used to dominate '60s motorsport was the FE-series, big-block, 427 which (at the order of Henry Ford II, who intended to rub Enzo Ferrari's nose "in it" after his offer to buy Ferrari was rebuffed) won LeMans in 1966 (a 1-2-3 finish that year) and 1967 in Ford GT Mk2s and Mk4s respectively, as well as winning three NASCAR Grand National Championships in 1965, 1966, 1968 and 1969.
Legendary Car Engines is a pretty good, coffee-table book, mainly for its rich visual appeal and outstanding insight to engines in British cars, but as a work covering the inner secrets of the best American engines; it comes-up a little short.
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