Bonus: Autocar Meets Karl Ludvigsen

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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

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

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

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

and thanks to our sponsor Anderson EV

which is rated excellent on trust pilot by the way

for more details visit

anderson-ev.com

Steve Cropley and Matt Pryor

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Bonus: Autocar Meets Karl Ludvigsen

Chevrolet Corvette

Ford Bronco

Citroen 2CV

Cadillac V16

Porsche 356

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