LE MANS 1949-59

Quentin Spurring. Published 2011 by Haynes. Reviewer’s own copy. $150. This is one of a series of photographic books covering Le Mans races decade by decade. Maybe it’s my age, but this is my favourite one

Here are 384 large pages with hundreds of great photos, all of them with detailed captions that tell you a surprising amount about the race, the cars and their drivers.

This was an amazing period for the 24 hour race, although it’s forever overshadowed by the disastrous death toll in 1955. Followers of the modern day version will be amazed to see the high number of retirements and the great gaps between the finishers in most years – it certainly wasn’t a 3-4 driver ‘sprint’ race back then! In 1952 only 17 of the 57 starters reached the end of the race and the 2 winning 300SLs were 14 laps ahead of the 3rd placed Nash-Healey!

When the first post-war event was held, some of the spectator areas were still off-limits because of land mines! Here are some of the photographic highlights that the book features:

* 1949, the first diesel powered car to race at Le Mans – the Delettrez with a 4.4 litre GMC army truck engine

* 1950, Monopole takes the first of its many Index of Performance wins with a tiny 611cc Panhard-engined car

* 1951, Porsche arrives on the scene, with a 356SL coupe featuring full wheel spats

* 1952, US oval track racer Duane Carter can be seen trying to dig his brutal-looking Cunningham C4-R coupe out of the sandbanks. It took him 2 hours and the car then broke an inlet valve.

And so it goes on, right up to 1959 when Aston Martin finally won, and we see Jean-Claude Vidilles’ Lotus Elite which burnt itself to the ground while the owner stood and watched because he’d been told that glassfibre didn’t burn!

A superb book.