The Ultimate Motorcycle Book
THE ULTIMATE MOTORCYCLE BOOK
CW BOOK REVIEW
Hugo Wilson Dorling Kindersley Ltd. 232 Madison, Ave. New York, NY 10016 192 pages, $29.95
SETTING YOURSELF UP AS THE ULTIMATE IN YOUR FIELD IS always a risky business, but with The Ultimate Motorcycle Book, author Hugo Wilson has made good on the hype.
This 192-page coffee-table book, heavy on photographs and light on text, is fascinating to thumb through and gives the reader a leisurely overview of motorcycling from its earliest times right up to today’s wonderbikes.
The bulk of the book, 124 pages, is devoted to a run-down, by country, of the world’s great motorcycles. In all, about 200 models are covered. The detail here is not great-you won’t, for instance, find the firing order of the Guzzi V-Eight or the torque specifications for your Grindlay-Peerless’ cylinder head-but the scope is comprehensive. The pages dealing with Honda, as an example, start with a photo of a 1958 Super Cub step-through and end with a small story on the oval-piston NR750.
Other chapters cover early bikes, racing and motorcycle technology. It’s in these latter two sections that the book’s light light and lively style falters somewhat. American racing receives only two pages-perhaps to be expected from a British publishing house-and the section on sidecar racing is illustrated by a 25-year-old BSA roadrace sidehack, not one of today’s futuristic threewheeled rigs. Also, the pages detailing technological advances are cursory at best, and a one-page glossary' at the end of the book is of little use to anyone except complete mechanical dolts.
Aside from those criticisms, there’s much to like. Photographer Dave King’s work is technically and artistically outstanding. Private collectors and sevi eral of the world’s leading motorcycle museums-including the AMA’s Motorcycle Heritage Museum in Westerville, Ohio-opened their doors to King and his crew, and the 600 well-lit, large-format photographs that resulted are easily the book’s best feature. Sprinkled throughout are period snapshots and small detail photography (Hailwood’s Team MV pudding-bowl helmet, a 1920s Triumph poster, a Kawasaki tank badge, etc.), adding interest. The book’s layout, by designer Simon Hinchliffe and art director Tracy Hambleton-Miles, is inviting and contemporary without distracting from the subject matter.
Wilson’s words amount to little more than short introductions and photo captions, but compliment the photos and layout, and unlike the authors of so many new bike books, he seems to have done a good job of fact-checking. He’s also struck a good balance with the level of information given out. Motorcycle neophytes don’t get bogged down and we’ve yet to give the book to a veteran rider who doesn’t at one point in leafing through the pages exclaim, “Wow, I didn’t know that.” Factor in a reasonable $30 price tag, and you’ve got a book that should be at the top of every enthusiast’s must-have list.
In his foreword to The Ultimate Motorcycle Book, AMA President Ed Youngblood says, “There is nothing else quite like the motorcycle, and there is nothing quite like this book.” He’s right on both counts. U
