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A brilliant blend of Shop Class as Soulcraft and The Orchid Thief, Earl Swift’s wise, funny, and captivating Auto Biography follows an outlaw auto dealer as he struggles to save a rusted ’57 Chevy—a car that has already passed through twelve pairs of hands before his—while financial ruin, government bureaucrats and the FBI close in on him.
Slumped among hundreds of other decrepit hulks on a treeless, windswept moor in eastern North Carolina, the Chevy evokes none of the Jet Age mystique that made it the most beloved car to ever roll off an assembly line. It’s open to the rain. Birds nest in its seats. Officials of the surrounding county consider it junk.
To Tommy Arney, it’s anything but: It’s a fossil of the twentieth-century American experience, of a place and a people utterly devoted to the automobile and changed by it in myriad ways. It’s a piece of history—especially so because its flaking skin conceals a rare asset: a complete provenance, stretching back more than fifty years.
So, hassled by a growing assortment of challengers, the Chevy’s thirteenth owner—an orphan, grade-school dropout and rounder, a felon arrested seventy-odd times, and a man who’s been written off as a ruin himself–embarks on a mission to save the car and preserve long record of human experience it carries in its steel and upholstery.
Written for both gearheads and Sunday drivers, Auto Biography charts the shifting nature of the American Dream and our strange and abiding relationship with the automobile, through an iconic classic and an improbable, unforgettable hero.
ASIN : B00FJ37BCI
Publisher : Mariner Books; Reprint edition (May 6, 2014)
Publication date : May 6, 2014
Language : English
File size : 4.9 MB
Text-to-Speech : Enabled
Screen Reader : Supported
Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
X-Ray : Enabled
Word Wise : Not Enabled
Print length : 384 pages
Customers say
Customers find this book beautifully written and well-researched, making it a great read for classic car enthusiasts. They appreciate its historical content, describing it as nice Americana, and praise its character development, with one review specifically highlighting the wonderful portrait of Tom Armey. The book effectively weaves together American stories, with one customer noting how it interweaves them with information about the vehicle.
