Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
If you want to know how to design a racing car in the 1960s style then this is the book you need. It shows you how to bend metal, design suspension, tune engines. And it’s a beautiful book with wonderful illustrations. It describes the conceptual principles of mechanical engineering that have been with me ever since.
OK, your last book’s about chassis design?
Ah ha! Yes, well, I put this one in to show what a wacky, fascinating and fun individual I am. I read this at school too. I loved art and poetry but I also loved racing cars. I thought I was going to be an architect so I did maths and physics and was absolutely hopeless at them both. Truly hopeless. With what little talent I did have I used to design engines.
If you want to know how to design a racing car in the 1960s style then this is the book you need. It shows you how to bend metal, design suspension, tune engines. And it’s a beautiful book with wonderful illustrations. It describes the conceptual principles of mechanical engineering that have been with me ever since. Not that I have designed a racing car since then. There is a picture of the polar moment of inertia. Once you have a concept like that, these principles of technology and their vocabulary can easily be applied to people, don’t you think?
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Stephen Bayley is one of the world’s best-known authorities on design, architecture and popular culture. Author, critic, columnist, curator, broadcaster and consultant, he was the founding director of London’s Design Museum.
