Cars: Freedom, Style, Sex, Power, Motion, Colour, Everything

There’s no arguing that cars can be sexy, stylish and powerful status symbols. Car lovers can explore this, and more about the enchantments of vehicles in Stephen Bayley’s Cars: Freedom, Style, Sex, Power, Motion, Colour, Everything. The book is Bayley’s love letter to the most beautiful 86 cars ever manufactured. As an award-winning car columnist and one of the world’s best known commentators on modern culture, he’s more than familiar with superb design, beauty, and timeless style.

He tells the story of the car as the story of how objects of industry became a medium of artistic expression. Memorials of our tastes, yearnings, and capabilities, these machines have layers of meaning and can be read like a book. He does so by presenting a spectacular study of achievements in car design. Bayley’s 86 favorite designs range from the 1908 Ford Model T, to the 1961 Jaguar E-Type, to the 2003 BMW 5. Presented in chronological order, each automobile also makes a statement about the national character of the country of manufacture, including American flair, German technical suprematism, French vernacular chic, gorgeous Italian sculpture, English antiquarianism, Japanese ingenuity, and Swedish responsibility.

Bayley’s bold statement, that “car design is one of the distinctive, even defining, art forms of the twenty-first century,” showcases the passion he has for the subject. His passion shines through in this volume, ensuring that readers put down the book feeling convinced that he is absolutely right.

Buy Cars: Freedom, Style, Sex, Power, Motion, Colour, Everything at Amazon.