CUNNINGHAM: The Passion, The Cars, The Legacy

Richard Harman, published 2013 by Dalton Watson Fine Books. $US 350 (plus postage & GST). Reviewer’s own copy Opening the mailing box was more like Christmas than unpacking a book. First of all there’s a beautifully made cardboard suitcase, inside is a solid slip case, and only then do you get to the two volumes of Cunningham which total over 844 large pages with thousands of photos!

UK author Harman has certainly written a definitive book, out of which Briggs Swift Cunningham Jr. emerges as a delightful, modest and wealthy man who had both the means and the energy to follow his passion for racing – while also attempting to develop a new sports car brand for the top end of the market and to win Le Mans for America. He was a pretty handy driver himself but hired many of the top guys of the day for his team too. His ultimate goals were never quite achieved but the team put up some terrific performances at Le Mans in the early to mid-50s, won the Sebring 12 Hour etc. And in the middle of all that he successfully captained an America’s Cup boat which held off a British challenger!

Briggs was racing at a time when the word ‘amateur’ had a much more positive meaning than it does now (although you could say that he could afford to do so). The amount of funds he put into his team over many years must have been phenomenal, and the sheer range of marques that he bought and raced, must have driven his mechanics and parts stores crazy at times! There are OSCAs & Maseratis, Jaguars, Healeys and dozens more.

The book is divided into a number of main chapters. There’s some duplication because the same races are mentioned by date and by car. I think that’s unavoidable and it means the different sections stand alone. Much less acceptable, in a book of this quality and price, is the number of typos and small mistakes in the text.

Vol 1 starts with reports in chronological order of every race meeting Cunningham’s team entered, complete with plenty of photos. That in itself must have been a mammoth research task. It then describes all the Cunningham road and race cars, followed by a look at every car the team ran, plus Briggs’s topclass road cars, a short bio on every driver who raced for the team (67 of them, including racing partner Alfred Momo) and a list of results.

Of course, it’s impossible to overlook the price. It is expensive, especially with the cost of posting a 7kg package and the fact that NZ Customs then charged GST on it! But the sheer size and quality of the production and the amount of work it represents mean that if any publication is worth this kind of money, this one is.