The latest in Motorbooks’ popular “idea book” series, Street Machines: classics, muscle cars, and modern, by Sue Elliot touches all the bases in the current world of street machines and provides the reader (and presumably the builder) with lots of great photos and ideas for their project. The book does a great job of hitting all the different nooks and crannies in the varied world of street machines, from knuckle dragging straight liners to high zoot Pro Touring creations. 

While people enter their projects with an overall vision of how they want the finished product to look, many guys and girls get hung up on some of the detail stuff and specifics on how they want certain areas of the car done, like interior, exhaust, etc. This book offers up a myriad of options that have been included in cars both professionally built and home constructed.

There is good tech information in each section, highlights of innovative products, and handy tips from car builders all throughout the book. Even if you are not in the middle of a street machine project, this is a bitchin’ book for dudes and dudettes who are just into cars! Wall to wall photos, both overall and detail shots of hundreds of cars make it a pleasure to flip through and there’s plenty of drool inducing iron between the covers. The book also captures a moment in time. Keeping this book on the shelf for 10 years and then pulling it out would be a fun exercise to show the evolution or abandonment of current trends in car building. 

There are some small technical gaffes in the book, but nothing that derailed our enjoyment of it or would steer a less technically savvy reader down the wrong path.

If you are between projects, score this baby and start mentally building your next one!

Idea Book – Street Machines: Classics, Muscle Cars, and Modern by Sue Elliot is available at Motorbooks.com and Amazon.com