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Bonus: Autocar Meets Karl Ludvigsen
Bonus: Autocar Meets Karl Ludvigsen
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About this episode
Steve Cropley sits down with renowned automotive author and historian Karl Ludvigsen to discuss his latest monumental work, 'Power Unleashed.' This three-volume book delves into the history and significance of supercharging and turbocharging in internal combustion engines, featuring insights from Ludvigsen's extensive research and interviews with key figures in the industry. The conversation also touches on Ludvigsen's impressive career, his passion for automotive history, and the evolution of forced induction technologies. With anecdotes and reflections, this episode offers a deep dive into the world of automotive engineering and the people behind it.
Topics:
supercharging
turbocharging
automotive history
engineering insights
Ludvigsen's career
forced induction
racing technology
automotive authorship
In this bonus episode of the Autocar podcast Steve Cropley talks to Karl Ludvigsen, one of the greatest ever writers on motoring subjects. Car-obsessed from his earliest years, he trained in the US as an engineer and designer in the immediate post-war years, beginning a parallel career as a motoring writer and editor almost immediately.
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This week, Steve Cropley meets the wonderful author and historian Carl Ludwigson.
Steve, over to you for the intro.
Hello and welcome to our podcast, AutoCar Meets. Steve Cropley here.
Today it is my huge pleasure to introduce to you one of the highest achieving people I've ever met in my life.
And possibly anybody's ever met in their life as well.
A brilliant author of motoring books, Carl Ludwigson.
Welcome to the pod, Carl, and thank you so much for meeting me.
Steve, thank you very much for coming up to pay a visit and I'm looking forward to it.
Well, a lot to talk about.
Carl, our main mission today is to talk about your latest book.
And I suspect one of your greatest.
I'll be interested to hear whether you think it is one of your greatest books.
It's entitled Power Unleashed.
It's a three-volume book in hardback.
Quite expensive, but it's an enormous piece of work.
All about the history and sort of achievements, I suppose, of the people who developed
supercharging, turbocharging, and various other forms of forced induction
in internal combustion cars, talk of racing, talk of aviation, all sorts of stuff.
And just the significance of all that.
So we'll dive right in if you don't mind.
Sure, we can do that.
I mean, it's a theme that I've had in mind for many, many years.
I happened to write a story about the beginning of supercharging
for an automobile quarterly in America.
And I took the story from the beginning up to about 1925.
And that was pretty adequate for a magazine article at the time.
And in doing that and getting that ready, I had the, excuse me, good fortune
to speak to a number of people who were involved in the very beginning
of supercharging.
Particularly a chap named David Gregg who designed the superchargers
for the Dusenbergs that were first to use them at Indianapolis.
He carried on doing other things after that.
And it was very, very helpful to have his view.
And I do mention in the book that David did write to me after he saw
the article and he praised the fact that the information in it was saved
for the future because otherwise that would all have disappeared.
So that was great.
And I also interviewed a chap who designed racing cars
for Indianapolis principally.
And one of the cars was a miller that was supercharged to a degree.
Two superchargers designed by General Electric.
It was about a 350 horsepower front wheel drive car.
And this chap had the opportunity to race it in fact in addition to driving it.
And he said it certainly, the smoke certainly would come off those front wheels
when he really got into it.
It would go very, very quickly.
So it's kind of scary.
When did you do that for the automobile quarterly?
That was around 1974 I think something like that.
So these guys are still around?
Yeah, they're still around and the piece is still there.
Must have been helpful for the book though.
It was helpful.
It gave me kind of a little start.
And of course a lot of themes needed to be developed further and so forth.
So I had the liberty to make it longer and deeper of course
than I could for a magazine article.
That's what it takes.
The thing I know about you because I have read a decent number of your books
is that you're the depth of your research.
And you just have a more inquiring mind than most people, don't you?
I am very, very curious about everything.
And I just don't like giving up.
If there's some way I can find out something that I'm interested in,
I'm thrilled.
But it does often require a very, very concentrated approach.
And although I'm sitting here in my little office,
I'm in touch with people all over the world
and learning from them and finding out things that I needed to know.
And also in the garage here there's a stack about four boxes high
and three boxes long of the material that I've used on the supercharging books.
So there's a lot that has gone through the fan if you were.
One thing I would like to do though before we get into the book
is just summarise your career because it would be a shocking mistake
not to summarise the rest of your career
because you've had what amount to four or five other careers it seems to me.
You trained in the US as both an engineer and a designer,
worked in both the car and the truck industries I think for a few years.
You started writing about cars as well presumably in your spare time if you had any.
Well I started my first article I think ever was for the technical magazine
that was published by MIT.
That's where you trained, right?
They had a student as it were, a group running a technical magazine
I thought hmm that's interesting and I got in touch with the guys who were involved in it
and the first story I did was about the Picasso of all things.
And the reason that the Picasso came into the picture was
that a friend of mine had a connection with the
and I was in New England at the time in studying
and this chap's friend became the distributor in America for Picasso
and I had a tour there of his shop and I took pictures of the engine
and the supercharger of course.
That was my first written story and published story.
You went on, you know I see, you've done my job,
all the other things you've done, you've done my job as well, haven't you?
You were editor of car and driver.
Well if I had stayed on at MIT I would have become an editor of the tech engineering news
but as it happened I went to Pratt Institute
and concentrated on industrial design, designing and so forth
and I was kidnapped from Pratt Institute where I was studying
a wonderful chap named Chuck Jordan
who came down to Brooklyn where Pratt was
and took me to dinner at the local eatery
and invited me to join a research studio at General Motors
and I hadn't finished my degree, I have four years of college
but the points don't add up in the right way to get a degree
so I said, gee I really need to finish my degree
and he said, oh don't worry about that, you can do that later.
So this was a terrific entree, a friend of mine
actually had gone through the same course at Pratt that I did
and he blew the gaff, he said there's this guy down at Pratt still
and you really ought to hire, so that was terrific
and then I had the problem, I briefly worked as the technical editor
of sports cars illustrated in that period
but I was actually putting off going into the army
but finally the army caught up with me
and I must have done pretty well on the sort of tests
that they put everybody through
because they put me in the signal corps to learn how to fix radios
and it was a five month course, very tough
and the reward was that whoever was top of the class
at the end of that had the chance to choose the available places to go
in the signal corps operation
and I think what was the opportunity, Far East,
White Sands, New Mexico or Europe
and I thought well Europe I think would be good
and I did proceed to Europe
and I was originally based at a suburb of Stuttgart
before they kind of put me in my final position
and I had heard, well of course Stuttgart is home to Mercedes-Benz
and I had written an article for sports cars illustrated
about the cars that they raced in 1954 and 55
they sent to a few leading writers
and magazines a portfolio of photographs of these cars
with no information, just a tranche of photographs
and Jesse Alexander who was our man in Europe
sent them over with a note
of what Ludwigson can make out of this
and I went through the material
this is where my technical knowledge kind of helped
to get involved in it
and there was one very tricky issue
which was the operation of the desmodromic valve gear
that opens the valve mechanically
and shuts the valve mechanically, there are no springs
and I looked at that
and I thought how the hell does that work
what do all these little gloomies do
and I figured it out
and the trick was the L-shaped arm
that closed the valve had a pivot
and the pivot had, in the Mercedes design
it had a couple of circular, let's call them collars
that were not completely circular
they were offset in the design
so there was a whole set of little cogs
and you could adjust the whole thing
so that you had a really three-dimensional opportunity
to get the valve setting just right
and I described this in my article
and as I said, I was at Stuttgart
when I was waiting for my final booking in Germany
but I thought what the heck
I'll get in touch with the people at Mercedes
and a fellow named Rudy Meilander
was then the person who worked with the Foreign Press
so he said, well, can I take you to dinner
and he came up and it was February
it was very snowy out
and he drove up to the Cassarna in his 220
and we were driving into the heart of Stuttgart
and pretty soon he turned to me
and he said, how did you get the information
about the adjustment of the valve gear
and I said, well, I told him the story
and how it happened and he said
we've been going crazy here
trying to figure out who told you about this design
and he just couldn't wait to ask me
presumably that kind of achievement
it was a fantastic key to Mercedes-Benz
it really made my opportunity there
I met the guy who designed the system
and right away I had a great entree to Mercedes-Benz
I wouldn't say I do today
it's a very complicated company
but they're still helpful
they're still helpful
well, I know that they're not talking to a mug, don't they?
you had another
you continued to have a career in the motoring press
while still working as an engineer
and designer elsewhere, didn't you?
I did, I did that, yes
and I did when I was in the Army, of course
when I was in the Army
I was very active
my boss and the business
they had a business set up to fix radios
and as long as I said
I've got to go off for a couple of days
and he said, you've got the time
I said, yeah, I've got it
and so while I was in Germany
I went to factories like Borgward
and Porsche, of course, and Mercedes
and I was there for the second
500 mile race at Monza
and Monza Grand Prix
and went to a number of places
and of course I met
and talked to and got to know
all of the people virtually
who were good journalists
Harry Mundy and I hit it off in a big way
and I still need to write a biography
of Harry Mundy, by the way
I'm wondering what is on my agenda
Well, I was going to ask later
The Harry Mundy biography
I have a file so thick
I don't know quite, you know
how I can begin it
Well, it's an interesting project
because we have a thing
called the Harry Mundy Award
Yeah, well that's right
We know insufficient about him
so we look forward to the biography
for sure
Oh yeah, I've interviewed his daughter
and son and of course
he had in mind that
when he left Auto Car to go to Jaguar
I would replace him
It didn't happen, but that was his idea
Why didn't it happen?
I don't know, the timing
You probably had more to do
and be a miserable, weakly hack
I don't remember exactly what happened there
but that was, but Harry was
and Harry came over to the States
on a visit to visiting different car companies
and he caught some kind of a bug
and we had to put him up
in our house for about a week
and luckily the doctor was just across the road
and also he said, you know
Anyway, Harry was very grateful
that we took good care of him
while he was making recovery
That's just to get back to the power unleashed
My question, my big number one question
is why supercharging?
Supercharging I think is a very interesting subject
to you all your life, am I right?
Well, it has been
It has been for sure
and I wrote an article for Auto Age
Auto Age was the first serious magazine
that I wrote for
and they invited me to come in
I was still learning at Pratt Institute
when I was writing articles
and testing cars for Auto Age
and I wrote something for them
about supercharging, how the relationship
in racing is such or was at that time
if you have taken an unsupercharged engine
as 1.4 against a supercharged one
which is one, that was the ratio that they used
to set rules for racing
on supercharged versus non supercharged
and I made the point that
a supercharged idea is waiting to be exploited
it's not adequately exploited
Because 1.4 to 1 wasn't enough
Yeah, it wasn't enough at all
and consistently it opened great opportunities
for racing cars
so that was my theme
and I think that led to that
in my big article about
covering the developments up to 1924
and that led to that
it is something that has interested me greatly
over the years, no question supercharging
Tell me the story about you
I think there's a story about you supercharging
or attempting to supercharge your mother's car
My mother had a beautiful 1949
grey Buick convertible
Super with a three-holder
with a Buick convertible
and she wasn't well
went through a not very healthy stage
and she to the great desperation
of all her friends didn't live to a normal age
she called leukemia
but so the Buick was sort of sitting there
and I had more or less the use of it
when I was away from school
and I thought, hmm, you know
there's these big pipes in the engine bay
that are hooked up to air going in
and then it's going out into the heating system
and I thought, hmm, if I dislodge the bit
that goes into the heating system
and divert it into the carburetor
we might have a power boost
a terrific power improvement
once the car gets going of course
and of course
Ram Supercharging
is a feature of what's in my book
there's a lot of serious stuff to do with that
and in fact, just to go
let me finish this story
anyway, I didn't take into account
the fact that when you do that
you need to deliver the same pressure
to the carburetor
so that the carburetor knows that this is going on
and it applies pressure to the liquid as it's going in
so that it balances out
and the guys down at the Buick dealership
were quite surprised that somebody tried to do this
anyway, that was...
Did it work?
Did it actually do anything?
No, it didn't do too much
no, in fact it leaned out the car
it wasn't helping the performance at all
No, not at all
That was a great story, wasn't it?
Yeah, that's right
But Supercharging and Turbocharging
even in my memory
they've gone through waves of popularity
and then a lack of popularity, haven't they?
One of the points you make, I think,
is about the extreme relevance
of pressurised induction to aircraft
and also another one is that
there was huge forward impetus
because of war, wasn't there?
You know, airplanes flying it
Tell us a bit about that
Well, one of my breakthroughs in the book
is the fact of...
I don't think of his name
but I found out who was the guy in Germany
who started a big, big effort
to create Supercharges for aircraft
and this was unknown, I mean,
for all practical purposes
but I put together some information
from a very good book written by a Swiss engineer
and some other material that I had
and that helped me put together
the whole story of Germany's effort
to Supercharge aircraft engines
and they made a big effort
they really did, but it was too late
to really make an impact
on raising aircraft height
the whole object, of course, was not speed
or anything of that nature
it was get altitude
because the...
Being on top was...
The aviators in World War I
quickly found out the higher the better
and that was a...
that of course carried over to World War II
the same thing was the case
the bombers wanted to get higher
so that the fighters couldn't catch them
and that then led to the fighters
getting more powerful engines
and better Supercharging
and other power advocates
other power expanding ideas
Do you remember your first drive
in something with a Supercharger or a Turbocharger?
I ask this because I remember
my first trip down the road in a Saab 99 Turbo
and I thought it was magic
I just thought it was unbelievable
and I just wondered if you'd had
that kind of experience that you remember?
Yes, the Saab
the Saab was a terrific design
they had done a really nice job
and I was in my freelance years
which were from about 1967 to 1978
I was a freelance writer
and I had the pleasure of having
the Saab PR guide drive up in front of my house
in New York State
in one of those turbos
and we did a bit of driving
and it was a very, very successful effort
and it's well documented in the book
I've talked to some people who worked on the job
and so forth
but I suppose the real beginning for me
during that period
how did the timing work out
I'm just trying to think about that actually
anyway I had access to the people
at Chevrolet and Oldsville
who were designing superchargers
or turbochargers rather
for their cars in the early 60s
There was a Corvette, wasn't there?
Am I right?
Well, Corde had a...
Did they?
Of course in Duesenberg
Yes, Corde in Duesenberg
and what's the other one?
Auburn as well
They were big advocates of superchargers
I remember the pipes, beautiful
Oh yeah, well that was a nice thing
a clever thing
The pipes were...
In fact, I just wrote something about the importance of the pipes
were something that Mercedes established in about 1923
they were there about and it caught on
and they used it in their racing cars
and then they kept it on the production cars
because it showed off a bit
Sorry, I interrupted you
You were talking about your experiences in it
Yeah, I'm just trying to think how I worked out my timing
because I think I was still in...
Oh no, I was still with GM at the time
I was in during my PR period with GM in 1962-63
and I went to visit the people who were working on
turbocharging at Oldsmobile and Chevrolet
and of course this was kind of a race between them
and Chevrolet won it by a hair's breadth
but the Oldsmobile job was very complicated
and it was too complicated
they concluded afterward really
they over-safetyed it is how they put it
this and that would happen
and they wanted it to not break
and whatever and it was over-safetyed
and the one that Chevrolet developed
with Thompson makers of turbos
did a very simple job
no valves opening
some of the things that they just
made the turbo small and tight enough
that when it reached a certain level
it automatically choked off its delivery
it flattened out and it was not a bad idea to do that
and of course I had a chance to drive those
Corbeirs with the turbo
and in fact I remember driving
Rudy Ulan out of Mercedes-Benz to the airport
in a Chevrolet Corsa turbo
which he was very interested in
he said what is that over there and what is this
he was interested in everything
it was a real honor to do that
after he visited us and got his picture taken
with Bill Mitchell and I knew him fairly well
it went out
the turbo era though as I was saying
but that had just tapered off
it was the only other people that involved themselves
were international harvester
and their bronco job
and they put a turbo in
but it just fell off
well it's the period when engines got bigger
and that was the big thing
the guys were out cubic inching their engines
if you didn't have 7 litres you would
they didn't really need a turbo
it wasn't on their agenda
but was there also a theme though
because I think now
even the most humble family car
that still has a petrol engine
has a turbocharger
and I see that
I'm interested in your opinion
as being because we've got electronics to control things
the fuel metering and the ignition very closely
we've got better lubricants
so the oil doesn't cook in the turbocharger anymore
we've got better materials for controlling heat
and so on
is that what's happened?
of course for diesels
it's a must have
because their guts need that kind of pressure
and it helps them deal with the fact that
the ignition by heat is the way it works
and it just happens to be very very adaptable
and in fact the concept of a turbocharged diesel
was very very active in the 30s, 1930s
and especially in Europe
and they got carried right on through
and GM started working on supercharged engines
just after the war
so that was a given
but for the petrol engine
it also offered some efficiency improvements
and also allowed smaller and lighter engines to be used
and the supercharger isn't light
I've got one in the garage
that you'd find is rather heavy
but it's sufficiently good balance
that with a small engine
the boost of a turbocharger particularly
or a supercharger
it heightens efficiency, no question
and that's what has allowed it to survive
and of course the people on the supercharger
and turbocharger side have been working hard
to make their units light, efficient, responsive
so they're doing their job extremely well
I learned about this years ago
because with another idiot
I owned a 2CV and we fitted that with a turbocharger
and it was of course the wrong size turbocharger
and the ignition controls were no good
and all the rest of it
so it boosted for about 2,000 rpm of the range
but you couldn't just increase
you had to accelerate in a lovely way
you had to wait for the boost in every gear
it was ridiculous
the 2CV must have been really surprised by this
it was good in a couple of ways
because it used to annoy people on the M4 motorway
because you would be doing 85 in your 2CV clamp
to the tailgate of some bloke in a Mercer state
and he would look at you in the rear vision mirror
and you would have to do 100 to get rid of you
I think that's terrific
but unfortunately it caught fire and burned to the ground
I see, okay
without me telling the insurance company either
so it was a total loss I'm afraid
I think it is a system that's helped the petrol engine
to catch up and ride well with the advances
in other areas of the engine
I love the way the motor industry defeats problems
because I can remember the early turbos
ignition problems and cooling problems
and funny pre-ignition and the rest of it
but that's gone, isn't it?
Yes, yes, you can pretty much just take them for granted
in the engine room, you can
Do you have, in your stable, your own cars?
Do you have cars?
We have one diesel and one petrol
and they're both turbocharged of course
Excellent
The courtesy of Audi, not courtesy
but we just bought Audi's because we like them
That's brilliant
Just talking about the work
this is an enormous piece of work
you know, hundreds of photographs
I guess well over a thousand pages
When you contemplate something like this
I mean I know it's been in your blood
under your skin for many years
Do you know that it's going to turn out to be
such a massive piece of work
and doesn't bother you that it's going to turn
You know, who's going to buy it?
Are you sure there's a market, that kind of thing?
Wow
Or does it just need to come out?
I hope there is
Are you driven? Do you find that you just have to do it?
Yes, I think that's a fair way to put it
I guess I just got the bug
to finish the job that I started back in the 1970s
and complete the
I mean I have written for example
the V12 engine history
All the V12 engines are in it
That's another massive job isn't it?
There are a few
I think there's one or two others
that are fairly comprehensive
Well I finished your, not so long ago
I finished reading about Read Railton
which is a two-volume book
Yep, that's right
That's the most exhaustive piece of work as well
It was
I budgeted a year for that
and it took me two years
Is that what happens?
Yeah, that's what happened on
Do you work on other things while
Yes, I do
Well I write for magazines
so I'm probably
I'm not just pushing them aside
when I work on a book
I try to satisfy their needs
and I consider that
sort of
it's
I need moving money
Yeah, of course
And once in a while I can get a
I mean
I'm sure that
Everill will say this is the most money
they put into a book
but it isn't a lot
It isn't a lot
I did hit them for an extra
amount of money
just at one point when I was really feeling
like I wanted to
polish it off
but they came to the party
but their contribution
is not in a
it needs backing up now
for them and for me
We'll see how it goes
I was interested in your other activity
so you write as well
for other outlets
You also have your archive don't you
You have a huge
picture archive that you
amassed
Have you still got that or?
We sold that in 2011
to
the
the
outfit in Florida
in Tampa
the Collier collection
they have an excellent collection
In fact
I put my
automotive
library
including all the pictures
that I had
that were sort of suitable
to deliver
on the market
in 2008
We were all set to
finish it off
and sell it to
Collier but of course
that was the year of
the collapse
he said Carl
we're not going to be able to
buy your archive
but then
things have proved
three years later
they were able to
take it away
You very kindly showed me
some of your
remaining
what I would say
was still a massive library
I'm sure there are plenty of pictures
I don't think you're
in fact destitute
for reference book or photography
No, no
I still have some
nice photography
and I want to
be generous here
Collier allow me
to use photographs
from the library that
they have of mine
at no charge
and that's extremely
valuable
because I do know
more or less what's in it
You know where the bodies are buried
Sometimes I think
I like to have that picture
that's one that I need
and so forth
Is this archive
was that a life's work
was it something you started to do
as a kid?
It took
a kind of
special movement
if I put it that way
when I mentioned
Rudy Mylander before
the big chap
who first sort of took me
into the Mercedes Benz
and I became great friends
of Rudy Mylander
and at a certain point
his
house was
starting to
there was danger of it
sliding down
the side of the hill
outside Turin
and so he needed
to do something
to get it
stabilized
and
and Rudy
took pictures from
1950 to
just mid-1955
wonderful, wonderful pictures
and so I bought his picture
collection and that was
kind of the heart of my
serious
35 millimeter
picture holdings
because Rudy
didn't waste any
of the
film
the pictures are just
really, really good
and
I bought some from Ted Eves
John Dugdale
who worked
before the war
I acquired his
archive, another chap
Stanley
a friend
of mine
he kind of bowed out of the photo business
I took that over
and as another fellow
I got his collection
and so I had built up
a pretty robust
collection
but it got to a point
where
Sam's
Annette's son Sam was
helping us and he was running it for a while
but it
became
just too difficult to
manage
a
picture business
and so
I didn't mind it going to
Florida
the only thing I
didn't mind is the fact
that
I still have access to the photographs
but I don't have access to
the hundreds of
drawers of reference material
that they got
which
they can't get
access to because it's all
sealed up in big
boxes and
they just can't
get into the buildings where they're
stored
it's a serious
problem
not serious problem, for me
I can usually
find out what it was
that I'm looking for
I would trust you to find out
can I ask how
you work
I hope you won't mind me saying
but you had your 90th birthday last year
didn't you
so you were kind of
moving along a bit as am I
sure
do you still get up in the morning
and go and sit down in the office
I haven't changed my
work habits
really since we came up to
or even before we came up to
Suffolk
I expect to be
in the office about 9.30
and I expect to leave it around 6
and that
generally has been 6 days
a week
and you enjoy it
do you find
what's the enjoyable bit, the research
or the writing? Research is terrific
I love the research
I love research
and so
yes I suppose in a way I would just
do the research
but I have to
doing the research
it forces me
to understand
what was going on
and I really try to
find out
why and how these things were done
it's not just
I'm not sufficiently
satisfied
if I say
it is done
a lot of books tell you
what they did
but they don't tell you why
they did it
you are a brilliant explainer
I want to do
I want to find that out
the reason I ask about the writing
is because you do have
a very good
way of explaining things
I've got a book of yours
which is about the V16, BRM
F1 engine
a complicated engine
and
both for the technology
and for the politics
and you dealt with both
in a way that no one else who's ever written about
the engine did
so
I've just concluded
that the writing
means a lot to me
I can
sort of detect that you like putting the words together
I don't mind
I was
a writer
from a young age
and
I studied
I give a lot of credit
to the Phillips Exeter Academy
where I spent four years
under very
testing
teachers
and very, very good
teachers
I sometimes am going back
to some of the things they said
and
urge me to do
that helped me a lot
to
learn how to write
properly
I still
avoid
mixed
you know
mixed metaphors
mixed metaphors
I still have got
I have a reasonable grasp
of good English
I think you're brilliant
I try to make it
try to make it work for me
and it's
satisfying
I've got some cheesy questions
do you enjoy the characters as much
as the engineering
because you write about both
particularly in
the Power Unleashed book
you talk
a lot about the people as well as
the technology
do you enjoy the stories of the people
or the stories of the engineering?
The people are
wonderful and
I'm proud of the fact that
there's a nice quote
in my book
from some engineers
who said
your work
is going to
go down in history
the information
that you're providing here
this is a unique
achievement
to have this
material
published in this way
and I'd like to make
that
comment to the people who are
listening to you because
it's not just
about machinery
there's a lot in the book about people
and who they are
and why they did what they did
and how they did what they did
and
what they did
that looks like
The other books I referred to
the Battle for the Beetle
and the BRM book
and Excellence
was inspected
the Porsche book
they're the ones that stand out for me
they're all about people
and they are aren't they
yes they are
and I can't go to bed
without
digging in the books
to know the names of the people
I mean one of the frustrating things
is that
British authors in the past
didn't bother putting
first names in
it was Mr. so and so
and Mr. such and such
and oh man
I mean I worked
ultra hard to
provide the full name
it's vital isn't it
it's vital it just seems
after that I could make it
maybe shorter but
I want the full name to be in the book
I understand that
and there are ways
you can find them
thanks to the internet again
it sometimes comes to your rescue
yeah
one thing
I was driving up here trying to think about
the books of tomorrow
do you think that
even though
the books that you've written are
heavy on history
there's a lot of technology in them
there's also a kind of romance
there's a you know
it's often about people's
individual endeavour and
inspiration and all that kind of thing
that the
the books of
you know here we are moving into the electrification
area do you think that that's kind of
that stuff will survive
I
hope that yeah as you say
it should
I'm proud of
one
there's one
chapter
about
the
the heroes of
heroes of turbocharging
heroes of turbocharging
I love that because
it was kind of a stage
I was working in where
there were these cars that were quite interesting
but
they weren't
all German or all this
or all that
and they were exceptional
turbocharged cars
sorry
I love that chapter because
you know we've got your
all kinds of
very very
exciting sort of diverse
cars yeah I've got it
it's really it's really good and I
I like it
do you
have
I associate you with
very thorough research
you know
detailed writing
total grip on the technical
concepts
so I feel humble about asking
this question but I ask it anyway have you
ever written a pot boiler Carl
have you ever done one in a fortnight
just to raise a few quid
yeah I mean my first
proper published book was
one that
my boss
John Christie
couldn't be bothered to finish
the MG guide
and John wrote
I don't know
it was a little New York
publishing company
that put out books
about yeah big you know
about 100 pages or 120
or something like that so I
you know they were
alright for what
they were considering
the period in which they were written
I think you know you look back on
you think gosh is that even
you know worth doing but
but it was it helped me
get started and
do some things that
were helping me
to kind of the first
first book that I think
really
really touched
the
the future was my
Corbett history yes
and I was very fortunate
to know
and work with at GM
the guys who had
done the first Corvettes
so this was this
this got me off to an excellent
start well isn't it am I right
in saying that's another book
that is still regarded as
the master work as it were
well it is it is up to
now the trouble is
that it's
the Corvettes are racing ahead
racing ahead
and I would love to
do book number
two which actually would be bigger
than number one I think
we did a heck of a job on
the Corvette
through the C3
as they call it
and it's
well respected particularly for
the depiction
of what happened in the early days because
I read somewhere that it was
credited with
starting the enthusiasm
for Corvette so I think it did
it did it really was
the beginning
of people taking
Corvettes seriously
and understanding the
whole
idea of a Corvette
and yes I think
it has that
record
they still look great don't you think
when you see even C1's
and 2's
I mean all of them really but
the early ones
you know you see a reasonable number
these days in the UK and they're
still excellent
they're terrific cars
I got to know Zora Dantov
of course extremely well
and various other people in the
Corvette world
so it's still very close
to my heart and I'm
hoping to write more about Corvette
but I
I don't know I don't know
don't forget the Harry Mundy
the Harry Mundy Bush
my
my wish project
right now
is the work of a fellow named
Walter Christie
Walter Christie was an American
engineer
who between 1904
and 1911
1912
built the most
astounding
front wheel drive racing
cars that you would ever
care to meet
with
V engines
one four wheel drive
with the engine in the rear
he drove
the cars and raced
them quite successfully
many times
and
a very prominent
driver bought one of his cars
and made excellent use of it
and
Christie then
he was called a Christie was it
Walter Christie
the car was called Christie
the cars are Christie cars
and he then
he went through a kind of
he did a big project
put
power under
fire engines
and instead of horses
it was a big conversion
and he made a lot of
equipment to do that
but then he got involved
in military matters
and tanks
and scout cars
and so forth all very
radical and interesting
designs
I have written
the outline of this
I have written the outline
and
I have two wonderful
people who are
sort of helping me
one is interested in the cars
one is interested in the
tanks
I'm
very very happy that
they're both looking
for me to write this book
and there's another guy
in between who is interested in all of
the Christie activities
and I've been a
keen Christie student
for many many years
and I'm
I've done
extensive research on Christie
and I'm just dying
to start writing it
but I need
to be sure
I still
got my breakfast
my breakfast when I need it
so I haven't quite
cracked the
financial challenge
of Christie
I mean you asked about
the
supercharging
turbocharging
our power unleashed
and it took me
once
once the basic
job was done it took me a year
to organize the photographs
it took me another year
to write the captions
for all the photographs
and
then another year to
check
the print
the PDFs
that came through
and there was a lot of things
that needed checking
and then there was another
half year for a
recheck of everything
the whole book
to find out if we've really
gotten everything the way we wanted
so that's just the end
you know the end of the
effort was on that
scale
I honestly wonder if there's
another product
in life that one could buy
which is so
so brilliantly conceived
and delivered
well I'm
very very
in your debt
to say something like that
and I'm
really really happy
that we had a chap
who did the design work
on the basic
look of the book
and I'm very proud of the
fact that
it has a
wrap around
of an engine
and that was my idea
so I have a lot of
so there's a whole powertrain
that starts on one cover
and runs around
and I just
you know I was thinking about it
and I said I know
I have a lot of these
this is a Porsche of course
and there are French ones and so on
but I like the Porsche one of course
because I am
a Porsche guy
and I
only owned one Porsche
which was a 1951
356
that's a good place to start
yeah it was
a great little car
except
I sold it to
a guy
who was
a night time
disc jockey, not a disc jockey
he was a
a talker
he would talk through the night
in New Jersey
and we
in
studying
design in New York
would listen to him
at 2.30 in the morning when we are trying to finish
our
project
and I went out to visit
him
on one occasion
and he
ultimately bought the car from me
but
I learned later
that
one night he came roaring around the corner
in his usual way
in the car except the
gates were still shut
he was okay
but the Porsche
was not
sorry to say
it was a great little car
because it had
a clock
that had a little knob at the bottom of it
and you would think maybe you
just said or something no
you pulled it out on a string
to wind it
wound it by
pulling this string a few times
and that brought it
a really good idea
wood cappings on the doors
and great
it was a 1300
and I
I did need to put a new gearbox
in it and that was
about all
quite a nice car
Carl it's been
a delight and a pleasure to talk to you
thanks so much
I'm relieved as your
readers are to know that your
hard workers ever
but in particular we look forward to the Harry
Mundy and all the rest of it
I'm honoured
thank you very much
thank you for joining us
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