When we open the BangShift.com Gearhead University, this book, Merchants of Speed by Paul D. Smith, will be first semester required reading. It is an awesome look back at the anchor companies of the high performance world. How legit is this book? Barney Navarro wrote the foreward.
A hard cover, fairly large format book, it is literally chocked from front to back with amazing info, stories, photos, and technical information on the men and companies who created and grew the speed industry. Ansen Atomotive, Isky Cams, Engle Cams, Offenhauser, Weiand, Evans, Wayne, Navarro Racing Equipment, and a dozen more companies are profiled in great detail.
The exploits of these great thinkers make for awesome reading, and Smith delivers by getting the interviews and asking the questions that gearheads want the answers to. These are not little “pocket” biographies, but excellent portraits that highlight the accomplishments, innovations, wins, and failures that made and broke companies in the infancy of the high performance aftermarket. As an example, the section on Navarro Racing Equipment spans more than 15 pages of great photos and informative text.
Magazines have been delivering more and more great history in recent periods, but this is on an entirely different level. Christmas is coming. If you are a history junkie and want to learn of the great people on whose shoulders we now stand you owe it to yourself to either score the book or plant a bug in someone’s ear to score it for you.
Books like this are (in our opinion) very important to the historical preservation of the hobby. When they sell, it encourages publishers like Motorbooks to produce more of them, which is definitely a good thing.
This book can be purchased at Motorbooks’ website, Amazon.com, and other book sellers.
