10
Apr 2024
Fabulous reviews on Seventies Motor Racing
Gordon Cruickshank Motor Sport Magazine May 2024 – Sounds of the ’70s As tributes to racing decades go, this box-cased special mixes sport, culture and stylised design, says Gordon Cruickshank. You can tell from the pale orange endpapers that this is going to be presented in some style, and it is, Palawan style with groovy covers and a smart box case. Essentially a photo collection, it’s drawn from the archive left by Franco Lini, reporter and photographer for Auto Italia on all fields of motor racing through the ’70s and briefly Ferrari’s sporting director. And as one who knew him from 1966 and now keeper of his archive, Doug Nye is well placed to introduce us to the man and provide knowledgeable and generous captions to over 480 photos in this muscle-testing volume. But that’s only part of it: as a companion to the beefy photo book there’s a slimmer volume which doesn’t mention motor racing at all. Instead it’s an essay on the cultural and intellectual aspects of the 1970s, and if it didn’t carry through the design of its companion book you would never imagine they’re a pair. Written by novelist and cultural commentator Michael Bracewell, it’s meant to give a context to the decade illustrated in the main work, but it’s a million miles from the average motor racing article. Sample: Throughout the 1970s an exhausted deliquescence prevailed, creating a depressed if atmospheric theatre of endings.” It’s a heady culture casserole – Brian Eno, Germaine Greer, the Oz trial, Ralph Steadman, Bertolt Brecht, Sex Pistols, David Bowie. It’s writing you’d expect to see in culture mag Frieze or in the catalogue at Hackney’s hippest gallery.
Alastair Clements Classic & Sports Car Magazine May 2024 You can tell from C&SC regular Julian Balme’s stylish cover that this is going to be a treat, and his design deserves special mention because the colours, themes and fonts all perfectly complement the fantastic imagery that forms the basis of the book. It’s the work of the late Italian Franco Lini, curated by Doug Nye. To set the scene, a slim companion volume features novelist Michael Bracewell’s essay The Seventies, an absorbing analysis of the decade’s cultural, social and political change.
Jürgen Lewandowski, Bulletin of the Motorworld Germany March 2024 – Franco Lini accompanied this development as a photographer and journalist for 40 years and also directly controlled it as Ferrari’s sports director – his photo collection is legendary, so it was time to publish them in a volume. A typical task for the British Palawan publishing house, which has been printing and distributing some of the most beautiful and unfortunately also the most expensive automobile volumes in small editions for decades. Volumes where the basic circulation is between 500 and1,000 copies – like here – plus elegantly equipped luxury editions, which in this case amounts to 50 copies. Highly recommended!