THE CAR BOOK : The Definitive Visual History

If you are looking for a book to gift to your son, whose toy cupboard is full of cars small and big, spic and span or in run down condition with broken doors or missing wheel, who prefers drawing cars and buses to mountain- rising sun-flowing river scenery, who can tell you the name of every car that just zipped past yours, I have a wonderful suggestion.

THE CAR BOOK – The Definitive Visual History

Publisher - Dorling Kindersley Publishing

It traces the history of cars right from 1880’s to 2010. It starts with the steam powered vintage cars and ends with future cars. It has information on more than 1200 cars- vintage, luxury, sports and many more.

 The book is divided into sections each dedicated to a decade of car history. There is a little introduction at the beginning of each section outlining the prevailing political and socio-economic scenario.

There is a side view of each car with its year and country of origin, engine type and capacity and top speed listed besides it. Interesting facts about the car are also mentioned along with it.

There are chapters dedicated exclusively to  great marques: The Mercedes story, The Cadillac story,The Rolls-Royce story,The Renault story,The Chevrolet story,The BMW, story, The Jaguar story , The Citroen story and The Ford story.

There are chapters which cover the design of these machines in great detail.These exclusive chapters are a visual delight.

There is a chapter on how an engine works too.

The book has approximately 400 pages, hardback.

Hold on ….Don’t roll your eyes and say he is too young for it !!

I bought it when Junior was just 5 years, barely able to read full sentences. I admit, it was an impulse buy, I saw the book in our local book store, flipped through the page, fell in love.

It worked like magic on my little one. He could sit with it for hours turning its pages without getting distracted. For a 5 year old it was more like a picture book then.  I sometimes feel that the eagerness to know about the cars , to read the available information accelerated the reading ability of my car crazy son. It is still one of Junior’s favorite books.