Thursday, October 15, 2009

60 years of car testing history and stories - what a wealth of information

What a wealth of information, what great stories! I just received my copy of the "Chronik des Automobils". It basically is a collection of articles (or mostly pieces of them) from Auto Motor und Sport (German car magazine) since 1946 in six books, each covering 10 years. I love old car magazine articles. I have a collection of magazines covering now 30 years on my own. But having the best articles summarized in six books is absolutely fabulous. Examples?
In 1951 the Dyna Veritas had 32 HP, was 116 km/h fast and had to be fed with 7.4 liter per 100 km. The DKW Monza of 1958 was faster with 135 km/h, accelerated in 21.9 s from 0-100 km/h and could be driven with 10 liters per 100 km. Only 20 years later the Porsche Turbo 3.3 took 5.4 s to accelerate from 0 to 100 km/h, reached 261 km/h, but took 23 liters from the gas station for every 100 km driven. And another 20 years later the BMW M5 was pretty much as fast as the Porsche 20 years earlier, but could seat 5 people and "only" drank 14.8 liters per 100 km. And in 1994 AMS tested the awesome McLaren F1 with 3.4 s for 0-100 km/, 370 km/h top speed and 18.6 liters fuel consumption for 100 km. People say the internet will replace magazines, newspapers and books. I believe there's a good argument having compilations like these six books in print.
For people interested, it's on amazon.de.

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