Reviewed by Scott Ross
Photos by Patrick Hill


Got that coffee table built yet? You know—the one for those big coffee-table books on Vettes that you were going to build?

Here are a couple more titles for it…to go along with the Corvette-exclusive ones you’ve got on there now. (Or you will have, once you get the table done.)

Randy Leffingwell and Darwin Holmstrom teamed up a couple of years back on Muscle: America’s Legendary Performance Cars, and it became an instant classic. Not just for David Newhardt’s museum-quality photography, but for the stories behind each car (and type of car) portrayed. The presence of “America’s Only True Sports Car” is laced throughout the book, in Zora Arkus-Duntov’s contributions to the Chevrolet line-up, as well as a benchmark for other car makers to judge their rides by. (There’s also a nice bit about the L88 and ZL1 Corvettes of the late ‘60s…see for yourself!)

The big news here is that Muscle will be out in paperback as of April 15th, bringing all the images and info in the hardcover edition into a more-affordable, yet coffee-table-ready paperback.

While Muscle is a historical work, Muscle Car Dream Garages documents how a number of notable muscle-car enthusiasts (including custom motorcycle builder Billy Lane, former Green Bay Packer NT Gilbert Brown, Thomas DuPont of DuPont Registry fame and hip-hop artist/customizer FunkMaster Flex) keep and show off their treasures, be they Vettes or steel-bodied rides. (There’s a LOT of Corvette’s steel-bodied cousins from “Your Chevrolet Dealer’s Sports Department” in there, by the way.) Simon Brown captures each owner’s personality through the cars in each collection, as well as the spaces they’re kept, stored and shown off in.

GET IT:
Muscle: America’s Legendary Performance Cars
Muscle Car Dream Garages
Motorbooks 800/826-6600 motorbooks.com

List Prices:
Muscle (Paperback edition) $24.95 + shipping
Muscle Car Dream Garages $35.00 + shipping