Books & Models A landmark insider’s work on the TWR Jaguar Group C cars hits the shelves, and James Hunt’s F1-debut March arrives in miniature

By Allan Scott, £49.99, ASM Publishing, ISBN 978 0 473 44255 2 Following on from similarly meticulous works on his time developing the Rover SD1 and Jaguar XJ-S for European Touring Car Championship racing, former TWR engine division manager Alan Scott turns his attention to perhaps his greatest set of achievements: Jaguar’s Group C racing programme.

As ever, Scott’s prose is frank and icy clear, combining entertaining memories of races won and deals done (including Tom Walkinshaw sourcing racers from overproduced cars at a time when Jaguar’s future was in doubt), with the kind of technical detail you’d £nd in a workshop manual.

We see the politics of Group C racing too, the tussles with Porsche both on track and in the boardroom, the gradual confluence of WSPC and IMSA racing programmes and the ultimate development of the doomed XJR-15 road car. It’s testament to some incredible motor sport engineering as well as a great read. You’ll learn a lot from this book.

The Reliant Scimitar By Elvis Payne, £19.95, crecy.co.uk, ISBN 978 1 90834 747 3 It’s surprising how little has been written about Reliant’s sports and GT cars compared with their rivals, so Elvis Payne’s book is most welcome.

Although he acknowledges Reliant’s three-wheeled bread-andbutter models, the focus is on the Sabra/sabre, Scimitar, SS1 and all the various concepts and ideas intended to expand the marque’s appeal, which the public rarely saw.

It’s these dead-ends and mighthave-beens that make for the most interesting aspects. The fact that Payne has sourced so many previously-unpublished documentary photos to illustrate them adds to the intrigue. We learn, for example, that the GTE came about almost by accident after a jobbing stylist turned in a frankly ugly design for a fourseater. There are also Scimitars that never saw the light of day intended to be Saabs, and others that ended up as Citroëns. A compact 128 pages, but it contains all you need to know.

Ferrari in Practice 1973-1980 By Frans van de Camp, £49.95, camp-archives.com, ISBN 978 90 827624 3 3 Van de Camp’s previous photographic essays have focused on BRM, Tyrrell and Lotus. With the same treatment applied to Ferrari, van de Camp removes the veneer of mystique and marketing slickness, and the results are extraordinary.

This is Ferrari during the successful 312 era, with Ickx, Merzario, Lauda, Regazzoni, Scheckter and Villeneuve behind the wheel. And yet it’s also a candid Ferrari, of terse pitlane smiles, ageing OM transporter trucks and cars in bits strewn all over oil-spattered tarmac at circuits long lost to F1, like Zolder, Zandvoort and the Nürburgring. Expensive for 200 pages, but it’s still fascinating.