Fans of famed Datsun driver John Morton will have the chance to meet him this weekend at JCCS. While you’re there, you might want to pick up a copy of The Stainless Steel Carrot: An Auto Racing Odyssey — Revisited as well.
Back in the early 70s, Sylvia Wilkinson’s followed the journey of Morton, team owner Pete Brock and their BRE Datsun 510 during their history-making 1971-72 season. The book contains detailed accounts and photos of those famed years of the SCCA’s Trans-Am 2.5 Challenge, where the unassuming Datsun took down some of auto racing’s most revered marques and cemented Nissan’s rabid following in the US. The only hitch was, that the book’s been out of print since 1975. That’s about to change.
The book is currently being reprinted and re-released by Brown Fox Books, and the new version has even more photos from 1971-72, and will include forewords by Morton’s contemporaries, legends of American racing Dan Gurney and Parnelli Jones.
Wilkinson herself will be at the JCCS as well, so you can get her autograph too. The book will retail for $46, after Morton’s racing number. If you’re not familiar with Morton and the BRE 510, check out some of our past articles.
uh oh $46 … 510ers are notoriously cheap … just sayin’
I thought the same thing – $46 plus shipping? That might be the most expensive book in my vast book collection. Still I love everything that is offered on the BRE website. If only I could go to Long Beach this weekend……………..
As the publisher & book designer I agree $46 is not cheap. When the project came to me it was suggested to price it that way as a marketing hook using John’s race number. Instead of questioning the wisdom, I took the approach to make it worth $46.
Sylvia revisited with many of the original BRE crew who compare notes on where racing went in the ensuing 35+ years since the book was first published. An additional 45 page chapter was the result. In effect John’s career is used to illustrate those years as he raced the whole time. So then we had to do justice to John’s career in photos (color and b&w) and since it may be shorter to list the cars John has not raced, than those he has raced, we wound up with a bunch of photos — about 165, including those on coated paper inserts as well as uncoated text pages. The book is 6×9 inch hardcover with 368 pages.
Of course if we add shipping or tax, we sort of lose the whole 46 connection, so if you buy direct from Brown Fox Books we are picking up any tax and standard USA mail costs — at least through the end of 2012.
While I considered creating a limited special edition of the book, by the time I had designed the basic one we felt everything was included that would make any edition “special”. (Though one retailer was still dismayed to not have a “special edition” to sell at a higher price!) Ask for a copy signed by John & Sylvia in our shopping cart at BrownFoxBooks.com — no extra fee — still 46.
Some people are finding it easier to part with the 46 as royalties go to a number of animal and wildlife funds — you can see why no leather bound edition was considered !
Mark Godfrey,
Brown Fox Books
PS: Tell your yourself (or your girlfriend) that at 46 it is ’bout half the price of the 1973 edition — and most of those are ex-library copies!