The World’s Land Speed Record (Motor Racing Scrapbook, No. 4)

First edition, first impression.  30pp, plus 16pp of monochrome plate illustrations.  Beige cloth-covered boards with gilt lettering on upper panel.  4to. Just a hint of aging to cloth; faint toning on endpapers and the occasional faint foxing and spotting,  else volume is neat, clean and tight throughout.  In a shelf worn dust jacket with ships and nicks at edges, rubbed on corners and spine ends, and a few mild, flat creases.  

The story of man’s search for speed in a motor car from the earliest days of rivalry between Count Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubet and the flamboyant engineer, Camille Jenatzy (called The Red Devil for his bright red beard), the world’s first great automotive speed duel which birthed the Land Speed Record at the end of the 19th century, through the specialised cars of the 1920s and up to the period immediately prior to the second world war and John Cobb’s breath-taking 394mph drive in 1947.  Includes lovely photographic illustrations of early speed cars.