AN interesting book about a man who tells his story about the different cars he had over the course of his life. Sadly majority of these car are European and though I had heard of some of them I had never been in or driven one. Now I will say I am mostly an American made muscle car, but I did have a fiat at one time with a spider engine which was nice, but after a few thousand miles I always needed to change full filter and adjuster carburetor. This was late 70’s so I am sure the spider engine is much better now. Overall an interesting book for any real car buff.

Classic cars are always going to be a subject that divides opinions, and in this book Cole doesn't pull any punches on his viewpoints. That can be a fairly risky approach, and I suspect his embracing of modern classics may turn away a few of the readers he's aiming for with this book, but for me they were not just a welcome addition but something that was almost needed.

Nostalgia is a tricky field in that regard. It can be a fine line between rose-tinted happiness and grumpiness aimed at the modern world. And to be honest, reading the introduction I was worried this was going to be far too much of the latter for my pallette. For me it was slightly uncomfortable. At times Cole drifted away from the joys of motoring and teetered dangerously close to setting the world to rights. At times I held my breath half expecting to be told that the world went to ruin with political correctness and health & safety. Luckily Cole has driven enough old cars to know cadence braking and kept himself from screeching into that abyss. Or his editor has new fangled ABS.

Luckily I did pick it up again and kept reading though. Once you get into the chapters proper you're treated to a glorious array of stories, anecdotes, and memories from a man who has apparently been around and seen a lot. Some were truly insightful, some fascinating, others just plain entertaining, but I found myself very happy to have kept going.

Oddly, for all these marvellous stories I wanted something somewhat controversial in books myself - more pictures. Perhaps it was my e-book advance that deprived me of some glory, but this could easily become a coffee table tome with more artwork. When discussing the elegant lines of Jaguars and Bugattis you want a photo every other paragraph. You want every angle discussed to be shown umpteen times. Even Saabs deserve to be shown off more. That's the thing, it's a visual subject and getting the balance of imagery to words right can be tricky, but I'd definitely have voted for more visuals because I just went and googled more photos of more than a few cars just to help me appreciate them a little more.

The great thing about this book is that it's well structured. If you have an obscure hatred towards a certain marque you can fairly easy skip over. If you have a huge passion for one you'll find those pages well worn. It's one of those books that can be what you make of it. And it's one that has at least something for virtually any classic car lover. And if you have a broad taste it's a positive smorgasbord!

An enjoyable effort reminding us that in the relatively brief history of the motorcar we've been treated to some impressive examples and gifted individuals. But, it doesn't get stuck with the Model T - you'll get some future classic enjoyment too. And that's what the book itself could be - a future classic.

I have recently had the opportunity to examine a prepublication galley of "The Classic Car Adventure." As an antique and classic car afficionado (albeit amateur), I was eager to read this book. Alas, I must report that I was seriously disappointed. The author is marvelously well informed on his subject, and his eclectic selection of marques to examine for his text are both enlightening and delightful. That said his ponderous prose style is extremely difficult to get past. The book seems to be written for a very specialized audience well versed in engineering and styling and might find some favor in those quarters, but it is, unfortunately, poorly written and badly edited. I am a voracious reader and have read many texts on the subject of classic and collector cars, this is a useful addition only if you are willing to plow through the very heavy going of the dense syntax and mangled sentence structure that marks so much of it. That said, the eclectic nature of the choices the author makes in terms of subjects for examination is intriguing and quite interesting, with the major caveat I have already alluded to.