Engines of Change: A History of the American Dream in Fifteen Cars

Ingrassia does for cars what Halberstam did for the Fifties. Well maybe not quite that good, but really a great book that explains the effects of the various cars on the American way of life. Ingrassia selects 15 cars that have influenced American society, from the Ford Model T to the Toyota Prius.One thing to note about the book, it is not predominately about the car itself. It is more of a look at the history of the epoch, the people and the trends that created the car, the people that bought the car, and how the spirit of the car affected American society. So gear heads beware, you are not going to get a chart that shows you the engine displacement and horse power selections available for each year of Corvettes. You will learn the role that Duntov played in the car and why the car appealed to Americans after the Depression and the Second World War. The book should appeal to a wide audience, and not just car enthusiasts.Also one can argue with his choice of what vehicles to include. The author explains its best:The hardest part about writing this book wasn't deciding what cars to include. It was deciding what cars to leave out. My selections will disappoint some people, especially fans of iconic automobiles not included.But this book isn't intended to be about great cars, fast cars, or famous cars, although it contains some of each. Instead it's about the automobiles that have influenced how we live and think as Americans. The cars in this book either changed American society or uniquely captured the spirit of their time. By those criteria most cars, even those regarded as automotive icons, fall short.Ingrassia, Paul (2012-05-01). Engines of Change (Kindle Locations 5485-5489). Simon & Schuster, Inc.. Kindle Edition.So if you are a fan of say a 57 Chevy, you are going to be disappointed because a 57 Chevy, while certainly an iconic car, in no way affected American society the way the Corvair did.The book is informative and fun to read. Ingrassia did a great job researching this book and has a good sense of humor. Excellent book, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Paul Ingrassia's latest book is engagingly written and highly entertaining. It moves along crisply and contains factual history, humor, and wit in equal measure. I found the chapters on VW, the Pontiac GTO, and the DeLorean to be the most enjoyable; the author's disdain for BMW and BMW drivers fairly drips off the page though.I just wish several errors hadn't crept in---proofreading by someone else knowledgeable in American automobile social history would have been beneficial. A couple of examples: the author wrote that the Mustang GT 390 in "Bullitt" driven by Steve McQueen (and others) was a Carroll Shelby car. It wasn't. He wrote that the '55 Chevy had a "toothy-grin grille." It didn't. Earlier Chevies did, and so did the Corvette in '55, but the standard '55 Chevy had a lovely eggcrate grille ripped off from Ferrari. "Bimmer" is not pronounced "beemer," either, as he condescendingly states. They are two different things entirely. Finally, Mr. Ingrassia tells us that the Delorean DMC-12 was a roadster with gull-wing doors. That's difficult to imagine, as roadsters don't have roofs to which gull-wing doors can be affixed. The Delorean was and remains a coupe, and roadsters have soft tops (or folding hard ones) so as to be able to be driven with the top down.The casual reader won't notice these things, and will be entertained by a good read. The more knowledgeable reader, though, might wish for a little more precision. Four stars for this one.

Why are books about automotive history so poor? Is it because their authors, so taken with the subject matter, go into mental overdrive, overlooking their own narrative lacunae? Or is it because there is no editor who has the background to vet what the author has written? Or is the author simply so captivated by what he thinks is his amusing style that he elevates form over content?I don't know the answers to these questions, but, whatever they are, they have all converged to make Engines of Change, a book that was well reviewed in the mutually back scratching media, a disappointing book.Paul Ingrassia deserves credit for his inspiration to write about how 15 different cars influenced what he calls the American dream. But the book is so filled with outright error, with breathless mischaracterization, with irritating stylistic furbelows (all along the line of "Wow, am I funny!"), as to seriously reduce its merit.Shall I give you a few examples of slop?In very early pages we're warned about the author's carelessness when we come across "Austin-Healey" misspelled as "Austin-Healy." Minor? I think not in a book of this sort. If you can't get the car names right, what have you got?Bookending this egregious error, Ingrassia's acknowledgments thank "Csaba Cera," better, and correctly known in the actual world of his journalistic eminence as "Csaba Csere." Embarrassing? You bet. In between these startling miscues there is a continuous drone of misstatement and outright error.For example: the photograph of what purports to be Dodge's display at the 1957 Detroit Auto Show actually pictures 1955 Dodges.On page 116 Ingrassia chronicles Ed Cole's 1952 seconding to Chevrolet, to fix its manifold (OK, pun intended) problems. But he implies that one of Cole's first tasks was to redesign an existing Chevy V8 engine, whereas, in fact, Chevy did not have (its very ancient history excepted) a V8 available for its cars until 1955. Let me be clear: indeed the new V8 may have been redesigned under Cole's leadership before it was ultimately introduced in 1955. But an impressionable reader could reasonably conclude from Ingrassia's telling that Chevrolet already had a V8 in the model years between 1952 and 1955. This, of course, was not so, and I'm sure Mr. Ingrassia knows it was not so. But his writing is so fuzzy, so imprecise, so unimproved by a rigorous reading before publication, that he sows error by failure to be clear.Moreover, he says that the '55 Chevy, whose grille has often been likened to one of a contemporary Ferrari, i.e. simple mesh, had "a toothy front grille." It did not. Again, these may seem like small points, but they are unacceptable because, in fact, they distort the very history that the author is attempting to recount.There is more. Read about the 1979 government bailout of Chrysler and be completely mystified. Ingrassia presents it as a fait accompli, but never tells us how it, over a great deal of opposition, came about.And, sadly, there's more beyond what I've written here. But you get the picture.Mr. Ingrassia's writing ranges from serviceable to cutesy to pedestrian. All too often he falls for attaching adjectives like "anemic" to engines, or, when he needs another, he'll attach "tiny" and apply it to a 4-cylinder engine that in fact, at 2.2 liters, is only 0.3 liters from the size of the largest 4-cylinder engine yet practicable. The problem once again is imprecision: "tiny" in relation to what?As someone who has been deeply interested if not completely obsessed with cars from a time before I could read, now more than 65 years, I wish I could give potential readers better news. There is a lack of diligence that infects Engines of Change. It could have been a winner.

This proved to be a good solid read over about a week, with interesting insights into the cause/effect and subsequent causes of the development of the automobile in America as a mirror of social political and economic development! Enjoyable to read!

Exzellent geschriebenes Buch über die Geschichte des Automobils in den USA anhand wichtiger Modelle, die den amerikanischen Markt geprägt haben. Nicht nur US Autos, sondern auch BMW und VW sind vertreten. Leider nicht mehr ganz neu, der Toyota Prius war das letzte Modell.

This book was much more than I had anticipated or expected. It was most informative and a very good "read"!

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