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History's Greatest Automotive Mysteries, Myths, and Rumors Revealed
- James Dean's Killer Porsche, NASCAR's Fastest Monke
- Narrated by: Roger Wayne
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
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Publisher's summary
Explore the origins of some of the automotive world’s most intriguing stories, mysteries, myths, rumors, and legends.
Fantastic stories have swirled around the automobile since the first car appeared over 100 years ago. History’s Greatest Automotive Mysteries, Myths, and Rumors Revealed compiles a juicy selection covering subjects from racing to automakers, crime to pop culture, and historical to modern day.
Did you know that after James Dean’s death behind the wheel of his Porsche 550 Spyder, parts of the car were sold off, and said parts then cursed their new owners? Or did they?
Did you know Bonnie and Clyde stole Ford V-8s almost exclusively as getaway cars because they were the fastest cars of their day? Or that Clyde Barrow wrote Henry Ford a “thank-you” note for building the cars that made escaping his bank heists so successful?
NASCAR has been the source of countless myths and legends. Did you know, for example, that a monkey by the name of Jocko Flocko once won a Grand National race? (Hall of Fame driver Tim Flock helped.) Or that one of the most famous stock cars in NASCAR lore—a Chevelle built by legendary rules-bender Smokey Yunick—never actually turned a lap on a racetrack?
Did you ever hear the one about the 1964 Impala that flew into a cliff—at 350 miles per hour—in the Arizona desert, thereby winning the inaugural Darwin Award? How about the Ford Pinto that flew like a bird? Or the 68-horsepower Hyundai Excel that maxed out at 115 miles per hour while speeding Rodney King to a rendezvous that would eventually lead to the L.A. Riots?
What was the first car to break the sound barrier? Who won the first Indy 500? What kind of car was dancer Isadora Duncan in when she was killed? What car performed the most spectacular stunt in the James Bond movie oeuvre?
In all of these cases, the answers may not be what you think.
These are just a few of the automotive world’s crazy stories, mysteries, myths, and legends.
Listen and be amazed!
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“Maybe you grew up liking the Ripleys’ Believe it Or Not panels that ran in your local paper’s comic section. If so, the format and content of this interesting exercise in debunking the past may genuinely catch your interest… it’s an entertaining read.” (Hemmings Motor News)
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Story
As quintessentially British as a plate of fish and chips or a British bulldog, the boxy, utilitarian Land Rover Defender has become an iconic part of what it is to be British. It is said that for more than half the world's population, the first car they ever saw was a Land Rover Defender. It mirrors many of our national traits, stiff upper-lipped and slightly eccentric.
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Amazing! Great sub-stories
- By Daniel Caballero on 04-30-24
By: Ben Fogle
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Ingenious
- A True Story of Invention, Automotive Daring, and the Race to Revive America
- By: Jason Fagone
- Narrated by: Adam Verner
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2007, the X Prize Foundation announced that it would give $10 million to anyone who could build a safe, mass-producible car that could travel one hundred miles on the energy equivalent of a gallon of gas. The challenge attracted more than one hundred teams from all over the world, including dozens of amateurs. Many designed their cars entirely from scratch, rejecting decades of thinking about what a car should look like.
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Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels.
- By Shamu from New York on 12-07-13
By: Jason Fagone
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Car Wars
- The Rise, the Fall, and the Resurgence of the Electric Car
- By: John Fialka
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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The resurgence of the electric car in modern life is a tale of adventurers, men and women who bucked the complete dominance of the fossil-fueled car to seek something cleaner, simpler and cheaper. Award-winning former Wall Street Journal reporter John Fialka documents the early days of the electric car, from the MIT/Caltech race between prototypes in the summer of 1968 to the 1987 victory of the Sunraycer in the world's first race featuring solar-powered cars.
By: John Fialka
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Merlin
- The Power Behind the Spitfire, Mosquito and Lancaster: The Story of the Engine That Won the Battle of Britain and WWII
- By: Graham Hoyland
- Narrated by: Chris Courtenay, Philip Pope
- Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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The most iconic planes of WWII, the Supermarine Spitfire, Hawker Hurricane, DeHavilland Mosquito and the Avro Lancaster, were all powered by one engine, the Rolls-Royce Merlin. The story of the Merlin is one of British ingenuity at its height, of artistry and problem-solving that resulted in a war-winning design.
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Mostly a history of Rolls Royce
- By Rafael on 09-07-21
By: Graham Hoyland
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Autonomy
- The Quest to Build the Driverless Car—and How It Will Reshape Our World
- By: Lawrence D. Burns, Christopher Shulgan
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In Autonomy, former GM executive and current advisor to the Google Self-Driving Car project Lawrence Burns offers a sweeping history of the race to make the driverless car a reality. In the past decade, Silicon Valley companies like Google, Tesla and Uber have positioned themselves to revolutionize the way we move around by developing driverless vehicles while traditional auto companies like General Motors, Ford, and Daimler have been fighting back by partnering by with new tech start-ups.
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Easy listen, non-technical perspective
- By James S. on 09-14-18
By: Lawrence D. Burns, and others
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The Limit
- Life and Death on the 1961 Grand Prix Circuit
- By: Michael Cannell
- Narrated by: Fred Stella
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Phil Hill, a lowly California mechanic who, defying all expectations, became the first American to win the Grand Prix championship. In the tradition of Seabiscuit and The Right Stuff, Cannell’s high-octane narrative evokes the lives of the daredevils who tempted fate each Sunday by driving well over 150 mph without benefit of seat belts or roll bars.
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Great Intro to F1 History
- By Aser Tolentino on 01-19-13
By: Michael Cannell
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How to Build a Car
- By: Adrian Newey
- Narrated by: Richard Trinder
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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The world's foremost designer in Formula One, Adrian Newey OBE is arguably one of Britain's greatest engineers and this is his fascinating, powerful memoir. How to Build a Car explores the story of Adrian's unrivalled 35-year career in Formula One through the prism of the cars he has designed, the drivers he has worked alongside and the races in which he's been involved.
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Snooze fest
- By moo on 02-09-20
By: Adrian Newey
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A Brief History of Motion
- From the Wheel, to the Car, to What Comes Next
- By: Tom Standage
- Narrated by: Liam Gerrard
- Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Tom Standage's fleet-footed and surprising global histories have delighted fans and sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Now, he returns with a provocative account of an overlooked form of technology - personal transportation - and explores how it has shaped societies and cultures over millennia. Beginning around 3,500 BCE with the wheel - a device that didn't catch on until a couple thousand years after its invention - Standage zips through the eras of horsepower, trains, and bicycles, revealing how each successive mode of transit embedded itself in the world we live in.
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Great listen
- By CKerb on 11-09-21
By: Tom Standage
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Disney's Land
- Walt Disney and the Invention of the Amusement Park That Changed the World
- By: Richard Snow
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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This is a spectacular story of error and innovation, a wild ride from a vision to the realization of an iconic cultural landscape. It reflects the park’s uniqueness, but just as strongly that of the man who built it with a watchmaker’s precision, an artist’s conviction, and the desperate, high-hearted recklessness of a riverboat gambler.
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Okay, but better books on the subject
- By J.D. on 12-07-19
By: Richard Snow
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The Perfectionists
- How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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The New York Times best-selling author traces the development of technology from the Industrial Age to the Digital Age to explore the single component crucial to advancement - precision - in a superb history that is both an homage and a warning for our future.
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Somewhat less than perfect
- By enya keshet on 06-19-18
By: Simon Winchester
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The Flight 981 Disaster
- Tragedy, Treachery, and the Pursuit of Truth
- By: Samme Chittum
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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On June 12, 1972, a powerful explosion rocked American Airlines Flight 96 a mere five minutes after its takeoff from Detroit. The explosion ripped a gaping hole in the bottom of the aircraft and jammed the hydraulic controls. Miraculously, despite the damage and ensuing chaos, the pilots were able to land the plane safely. Less than two years later, on March 3, 1974, a sudden, forceful blowout tore through Turk Hava Yollari (THY) Flight 981 from Paris to London. THY Flight 981 was not as lucky as Flight 96: it crashed in a forest in France.
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Fill fill fill...
- By Rodney on 02-15-22
By: Samme Chittum
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The World's Fastest Man
- The Extraordinary Life of Cyclist Major Taylor, America's First Black Sports Hero
- By: Michael Kranish
- Narrated by: David Sadzin
- Length: 11 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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In the tradition of The Boys in the Boat and Seabiscuit, a fascinating portrait of a groundbreaking but forgotten figure - the remarkable Major Taylor, the Black man who broke racial barriers by becoming the world’s fastest and most famous bicyclist at the height of the Jim Crow era.
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before there was Jesse Owens and Jackie Robinson
- By Leo on 07-29-19
By: Michael Kranish