BOOKREVIEW FORMULA 1 CAR BY CAR 1970-79
The 1970s was a beautiful decade for Formula 1, during which, seemingly paradoxically, homogeneity spawned diversity. The ubiquity of the Ford/cosworth DFV engine and Hewland gearbox – offthe-shelf hardware that was relatively cheap and second to none in performance – led to a proliferation of teams.
Those were the days when a preview to a grand prix provided previously undiscovered nuggets. Readers would genuinely not know until newsagents opened on Wednesdays whether ‘Mclaren will run a third car for Giacomelli’, or if Nelson Piquet was slated to do an F1 race on Sunday before dashing back to Mallory Park or somewhere on a Bank Holiday Monday to race in Formula 3.
That’s why Formula 1 Car by Car 1970-79, produced by Evro Publishing and written by former Autosport publisher Peter Higham, is so appealing. It’s the second instalment in Higham’s decade-by-decade trawl through the highways and byways of F1.
Unlike the single-year ‘biographies’ of F1 by Mark Hughes, in which the trends of the time are re-examined with the benefit of the knowledge we have today, Higham’s method is to delve into the nooks and crannies mostly of period reportage – in Autosport, Motorsport (Motoring) News, Autocourse and Motor Sport, while using the phenomenal LAT archive. The result is a series of gems hitherto lost in the mists of time.
Take Jacky Ickx’s reasons for switching his personal sponsorship for 1972 from Kent to Marlboro “not for the money, but because I think it is a better cigarette”.
The treat here is seeing colour photos of all the driver/ car combinations. Each team is given a technical and driver line-up summary, plus sponsorship where relevant, but to this writer it’s not the Lotuses, Ferraris, Tyrrells etc that are this book’s main appeal. Instead, it’s the obscure, such as the Connew, the concurrent Tecno projects, the Trojan and the Kauhsen – not to mention the beautiful Kojima – or the stories of everyone to have tried to qualify for a GP in the ill-starred RAM Brabham privateer team of 1976. Every driver/car model that started a world championship race is pictured. Even if you’re too young to have been around during that era, remember the cliche frequently propounded by old fogies that “you could’ve painted all the cars white and still distinguish which was which”. Then look at this weird, wonderful and sometimes outlandish collection of weaponry and realise that’s true.