Book Review: Sports Cars by Charlotte & Peter Fiell--- What Collector Tastes Say About Society

If you like old cars and you're looking for a distraction from the relentlessly bleak news about the world around us, you could do far worse than spending a weekend sinking into Sports Cars, by Charlotte & Peter Fiell, published in 2023 by Taschen.  The ample color photography is all as well-composed as the cover shot of the '56 Ferrari 290 MM, and there are monochrome photos of the races where many of these cars originally competed.  The book is divided into eras: 1910-1930s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s-90s, and the 2000s. As the subtitle indicates, the focus is on "ultimate collector cars", and this occasionally leads to featuring a car that attracts huge auction bids today, rather than one that was more innovative technically, or more successful in racing. But because there's all that photography to go with the stories, this aspect of the book will only strike you if you're a fan of a particular car.  Like the Maserati 300S which is not featured, but more successful in racing than big brother 450S, which is.  Or like Italy's pioneering Lancia, which is not featured at all...

We understand that the 50-car, 511-page format imposes limits, but think that some redundancy could be reduced. Keep the classic Mercedes 300SL Gullwing, but drop the roadster, likewise choosing the race-winning Shelby AC Cobra 289 over the 427.  There could be some culling of racing red Ferraris, too.  Then maybe the authors would have room for the Lancia D-24, above, which beat Ferrari in the '53 Carrera Panamericana, the '54 Mille Miglia and the '54 Targa Florio.  The section on 70s cars is kind of thin, as it features only one car actually introduced in '67, so it would benefit from inclusion of Lancia's Stratos HF, which won the World Rally Championship in '74, '75 and '76.  If that's not a 70s landmark, nothing is.  Maybe for a future revised edition...

The text helpfully lists the engine size, configuration and power, transmission type, top speed and number produced for each car, and tells the creation story of each. Engineers and body designers get plenty of credit along with race drivers; even the poster artists get mentioned.  You might be surprised to discover that the 1912 Stutz Bearcat featured a 3-speed transaxle nearly 4 decades before Lancia introduced the first modern production car with front engine and rear transaxle.  You won't be surprised that Maserati gets 3 cars included, but not the offshoot OSCA made by the Maserati brothers, as the OSCA is better-known by racers than trend-conscious collectors...

Other etceterini like the 60s Fiat Abarth below didn't make the grade, perhaps because they are typically small and auction for 6 figures instead of 7 or 8.  Perhaps for similar reasons, pioneering beauties like the Lotus Eleven and Type 14 Elite don't appear.  Again, a suggestion for a future book...

The chapter on 1960s cars makes it clear the authors feel this was a golden age; they include 17 cars.  Six of these are mid-engined, showing the effect of the revolution presaged by the Porsche 550 Spyder in the 50s chapter, realized by Cooper's GP Championships in '59 & '60, and reflected in production cars like the Lamborghini Miura S below.

The section on the 1970s-90s surprises by including only one car from each decade.  The '71 Lamborghini Miura SVJ is really a modified version of the P400 Miura which first appeared in 1967.  Representing the 70s instead, you might've expected to see Lambo's LP400 Countach, also bodied by Bertone, as Marcello Gandini's wild wedge occupied so many posters on teenagers' walls and influenced other cars of that decade.  Gandini's earlier design for the Miura is more graceful and fluid, though, and the first of 4 SVJs attracted a huge auction bid because it was built for the Shah of Iran (the money factor). The money factor began to dominate as we moved into the 1990s, just as it became clear that the distribution of wealth in society had shifted upward to the peak of the socioeconomic pyramid...

The authors selected the McLaren F1 to represent the 90s (no complaints there on technical or esthetic terms). The original price range of the F1 was $800,000 to $1 million, making it stunningly expensive as well as stunning.  The 3-passenger, center-steered, mid-engined road rocket signaled the beginning of the transition from supercars to hypercars, cars that were purchased because of their high prices, rather than despite them.  The authors note that the Sultan of Brunei bought 3 of the 6 special LM models; one wonders if he will drive all of them.  F1s have since brought auction prices of up to $20 million; one guesses owning half of the special LMs produced will have some effect on an LM's eventual auction price.  By the 2000s it was apparent that these types of cars had entered the category of vacant Manhattan penthouses owned by oligarchs in distant dictatorships; they are places to park money rather than driving or racing machines.  By the 2000s hypercars proliferated along with the lopsided distribution of wealth; the authors feature 8 cars in that chapter, many of them with contrived, gimmick-ridden forms designed to capture attention in an attention economy, including Ferrari's La Ferrari. Something has gone off track when the builders need to tell you twice that their product is a Ferrari. Superlatives and hyperbole begin to run a bit rampant in this chapter, and a visit by the Adjective and Adverb Police might have been helpful.  Perhaps a future revised edition will note that the 90s also produced the Lotus Elise, a compact, lightweight, reasonably-priced sports car that was fun to drive.  Its chassis design was shared by the later Tesla roadster.  But that is a story for another chapter...

Footnote: 

For more info (along with photos) on the cars we'd have added (without being invited) to the Fiell's awfully good-looking book, you might want to have a look at the following posts from our archives:  Lancia Stratos;  "Lost Cause Lancias: New Stratos and Old Hyena", posted Feb. 15, 2018.  OSCA: "The Etceterini Files Part 30: When a Maserati is Not a Maserati", posted Dec. 29, 2022, and "Almost Famous: OSCA" posted April 20, 2016.  The Lancia D24 is described in photos and text in "1st Impressions of the Monterey Historics: Whatever Lola Wants..." posted August 28, 2018,  

Photo Credits:  

All photos are by the author, except for the 3rd from the top (Lancia Stratos), which is from Wikimedia; the shot of the book's cover features Tim Scott's photo of the Ferrari 290MM for RM Sotheby's.

Roadside Attraction: The Boulder Theater

Walking north along Boulder's 14th Street from the Pearl Street pedestrian mall, it's hard to miss the Boulder Theater, a surviving landmark from the depths of the Great Depression, and one of the best examples of Art Deco architecture in Colorado...

When Kansas City architect Robert Boller of Boller Brothers (founded by older brother Carl) was selected to turn the 1906 Curran Opera House into a palace for showing motion pictures, his design went beyond mere renovation to replace the old Curran with a new structure, auditorium and facade to reflect contemporary design themes.  During the Curran's nearly 3 decades of service, it had also hosted orchestral concerts and also some silent films, which presaged the flexibility it would need to survive later in the century.

Architectural historians think that Boller's design for the Boulder Theater building owes a bit to the Boulder County Courthouse, completed in 1933 to the design of local architect Glen H. Huntington.  It's right across 14th Street, and when you walk around to look at the courthouse facade facing Pearl Street, below, you see what those historians mean. The theater facade echoes the stepped, symmetrical facade of the courthouse, with its highest parapet over the central entry.  The courthouse is faced in sandstone from a dismantled railroad building, an early example of recycling building materials. Boller's theater facade contrasts with the restraint of the WPA Moderne courthouse, though, with exuberant Art Deco patterns of brightly colored terra cotta surrounded by stucco. That facade, protected by a legal easement sponsored by Historic Boulder, was restored with the help of a grant from the National Trust for Historic Places, and completion was celebrated on November 5 of this year.

The theater was one of the first in the country, and likely the first in Colorado, to feature a sound system with woofers and tweeters. In 1935, the year it was under construction, MGM's Shearer Horn amplifiers were released, a 2-way system with woofers for lower frequencies and tweeters for higher ones. There were also special precautions against fire.  Unlike many theaters with heating systems located below the stage floor (usually wood), the Boulder Theater located its heating unit in an adjacent building. The projection room walls were fireproofed, important in an era when the film used was highly-flammable nitrate.  And after consulting with Boulder Building Department, architect Boller increased the number of exits to 10, with 3 from the balcony area. 

The north and south walls of the auditorium display murals set within giant circles. The murals were designed and painted twice by local artist Earl Tryon.  When viewing his initial mural designs (of which we* could find no photos), he decided they didn't relate well to the themes of the new theater design...

So Tryon painted over those images with these colorful trees and flowers, which may have held symbolic meanings for the original inhabitants of this region. In Boulder Valley, the indigenous people were the Utes, who moved west into the mountains when the Southern Arapaho tribe moved into the valley. By 1858, Arapaho Chief Niwot ("left hand") was suggesting that gold-seekers leave the area.  Some seeking gold moved on to try their luck in California, and Chief Niwot now has a village with a nice downtown 9 miles north of Boulder named for him... 

By 1980 Boulder Theater was losing its movie audience to the Crossroads Mall multiplex, and Historic Boulder moved to purchase the building, securing landmark status and the facade easement that saved it from demolition and replacement with a parking lot. They also played an important role in the recent restoration of the facade with current owners, who have been offering concerts in the building for 30 years.  Both Boulder Theater and Boulder County Courthouse* have been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1980 as part of the Downtown Boulder Historic District.  As a result of Historic Boulder's heroic effort to save Boulder Theater from demolition, it also gained status as a National, Colorado and Boulder Historic Landmark in 1980.

*Footnote:  A big thanks to the staff at Boulder's Carnegie Library for Local History, who helped find newspaper articles from 1936 covering the design and construction of Boulder Theater during my visits there. 

The County Courthouse was declared a National Historic Landmark in 2024, not for its architectural style, but for its historic significance as the site where the  first same-sex marriage licenses were issued in 1975. 

Photo Credits:

Top, 2nd & 4th from top:  the author

3rd from top:  Historic Boulder

5th from top:  On the Boulder Reporting Lab website, sourced from Boulder's Carnegie Library for Local History.

6th + 7th & 8th (adjacent mural shots):  Barry Trester

Bottom:  the author