The best car books

1923-2023. A full century since the introduction of the Le Mans 24h endurance race. It's the world's most famous motor race and still by far, the most rewarding to win for any team.

This book takes you through all 100 years leading up to Ferrari's historic win with the 499P. From the roaring 20s to the technical... err... 2020s, you'll find it all here and is a great guide to any fan of world endurance racing.

Contributed by none other than Steve Sutcliffe - who knows a thing or two about driving cars - this comprehensive guide to must-drive sports cars is filled with iconic machines from supercars to the oddballs.

If you're after a bit of everything in the enthusiast car world, this is the book for you.

So often do stories keep being excavated from the pits of motor racing's golden age. Sure, this is yet one more, but it's just as captivating as any other.

Lance Macklin was a driver who narrowly escaped becoming a statistic in motorsport's worst accident: the June 11, 1955 Le Mans crash. This book dives into that infamous moment and then a lot more besides because Macklin was quite an interesting character.

If you'd told me that I'd enjoy reading a book about cleaning your car, I'd not hesitate to pour cold water on your foolish notion. But you'd be right and I'd be washing my mouth out with Simoniz because this is fascinating. No, really.

The authors - all hands-on practitioners - know way too much about different techniques for cleaning, restoring, buffing, preserving and pimping. But they manage to not get too dogmatic or uppity about it.

The temptation to shout 'YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG!' has been heroically resisted. Instead, they offer detailed suggestions for a variety of techniques for tackling any given aspect of maintenance. It pulls off the remarkable trick of making better results seem easily achievable.

This exquisitely detailed book examines 250 models during the mid-20th century, from the 1940s to the 1980s. From the pomp and magnificence of 1960s American automotive leviathans to the VW Kombi, to Lotus, delve into deep detail about the world's most famous car models.

Furthermore, this book covers the stories of a number of marques including Ferrari, Jaguar, Fiat, Citroen, and Lancia, along with many others. This is a tremendous book that brings you to understand how the world's great car models came to be. Solid work, Giles Chapman.

If there's ever a manufacturer of cars that generates fascination around the way they're produced, it's always going to be the product of Charles Rolls and Henry Royce.

Since 1904, it has produced cars that have often been regarded as the best. From the magnificent Silver Ghost that conquered the Scottish reliability trials to the modern Wraiths and Dawns of today. This book details the history of Rolls Royce, the manufacturing techniques, and ultimately an amazing behind-the-scenes look at what goes into making such things.

This, on the other hand, has virtually none of the nitty-gritty detail that makes Twohig's book so compelling.

This is 90 per cent coffee-table browsing material for dreamers who'll never do the big trip and nicely done. After all, Route 66 will still be there next year, won't it?

Great drivers discuss not only their race wins but their toughest moments - not only within the sport but in their overall lives. The late Niki Lauda, for instance, talks about the time his airline suffered a fatal plane crash, and how he fought to exonerate his pilots from blame; Ari Vatanen talks candidly about recovering from the mental trauma he suffered while recuperating from appalling injuries suffered in a crash; Mika Hakkinen talks philosophically about how much of one's self you must sacrifice to single-mindedly dedicate yourself to winning in top-level sport.

The premise may seem maudlin but the book is both thought-provoking and inspiring. It shows the sport's heroes are not only human and fallible but also deep-thinking, rounded characters, upholding the author's premise that 'in racing as in life, our greatest moments can be born of our greatest defeat.'

One of the most successful, pioneering F1 car designers ever, Adrian Newey has become a household name - despite not being a driver. Over his 35 year career, he's designed championship-winning cars for Williams, McLaren and Red Bull - and worked with the likes of Senna, Hakkinen and Vettel.

This is his autobiography, but rather than a straightforward narrative, it focuses on key cars in his career. It's a must-read for F1 fans and more technically minded car enthusiasts, too.

TVR had a very similar start up to a load of other British sports car brands as per the likes of Marcos, Lotus, and Ginetta. Trevor Wilkinson did his upmost to make an impact on the sports car scene, and Martin Lilley put the brand on the map.

This great value book tells the story of those early cars. From the revolutionary Grantura to the M-Series cars of the 1970s, and the V8 Griffiths and Tuscans between, this book has it all. The only part of the TVR story it doesn't detail is the Peter Wheeler era of the mad 80s and 90s models.

Before he worked as a Sky pitlane reporter, Marc Priestley was an F1 mechanic with McLaren. He was there at a fascinating and sometimes turbulent time, so he has many stories to tell. A veil is drawn over one or two episodes, but on the whole, it's refreshingly frank and candid.

The story of Priestley's own career isn't particularly thrilling. He was good at his job, he got promoted; but as a witness to the feuding between Hamilton and Alonso he's brilliant. He's also fascinated by the good-eggness of David Coulthard, the peculiarities of working for Ron Dennis and the weirdness of Spygate. It's just a pity about the boys-will-be-boys high jinks that he insists on sharing with us. Another hire car bites the dust, another hotel-room TV meets the bottom of a swimming pool.

If you renounced fashion as long ago as I did, you might need a bit of help in figuring out who Magnus Walker is and why he's written an autobiography. Turns out this bearded, long-haired, heavily tattooed gent from Sheffield is a fashion designer. Although, to the untrained eye, his fortune seems to have been built on taking some perfectly decent clothes and messing them up.

This would, of course, make you worry for the Porsche 911s that he fiddles with as a hobby. Except they're all really nice. He gets all the lairiness out of his system with the torn jeans and applies what is clearly a very keen eye to tweaking his Porsches. Written in a no-nonsense manner, he makes it seem pretty easy to make a fortune and spend large chunks of it on cars. If only.

When W.O Bentley entered his magnificent 3 Litre machines in the first Le Mans in 1923, they were the only British cars present on the grid. Losing out on a couple of occasions to Chenard Walcker and Lorraine Dietrich, the British Racing Green beasts would eventually dominate the 24h endurance race in 1924 and then consecutively from 1927-1930.

The Bentley Boys consisting of names like Woolf Barnato and Sir Henry Birkin would go on to become heroes of the motorsports scene. They would simply drive down from England to France, win Le Mans, and drive back in time for some champagne. This book details the extraordinary story of those gentleman, and it's well worth a read.

We all appreciate the shapes and masterful engineering of supercars from across the globe. But how often do you think about how they manage to achieve the ferocious lap times and top speeds?

That's all detailed in The Science of Supercars, which has all the technical information and insight that you need to get your geek on.

Inevitably in the world of car culture, the three numbers, 007 have to appear at some point. But Bond was always a great admirer of cars and they became an integral part of the franchise. This fascinating book covers the original design sketches of the cars with the gadgets installed as well as pre-production photographs of them being built. It really is an underrated fact-finding bible for Bond fans.

From the Sunbeam Alpine borrowed from a local Jamaican resident to the custom-built DB5 stunt cars in No Time To Die, this book has it down a Q. But even more interestingly than the star cars, the book also covers other vehicles used by on-screen characters throughout each film. Maserati Biturbo from Licence to Kill, anyone?