The top automotive Christmas books for 2022

You can’t go wrong with a good book at Christmas. So the Autocar team decided to compile a list of Christmas page-turners with a motoring theme. Just add a log fire, mince pies and mulled wine and you're ready to go. 

Rally - Reinhard Klein

Annoyingly, this book is so good it has become collectible, pushing prices ever upwards, but if you can find one to suit your budget (and remember it is big and lavishly printed), then you are in for an absolute treat. The pictures are sensational and the accompanying text adds enough layers to please everyone from the diehard enthusiast to the casual page-flicker, no doubt lured in by that oh-so-amazing cover picture.

Jim Holder

The Secret Life of Bernie Ecclestone - Tom Bower

In a life as remarkable as Bernard Charles Ecclestone’s, it should come as no surprise that this biography of him has the ability to make the reader’s jaw drop on almost every page. Bernie gave author Tom Bower access to him, his inner circle, friends and, most intriguing of all, his enemies to tell the whole life story of how he went from an impoverished childhood to a billionaire. Bower takes full advantage with a book of staggering depth, detail and research, and thus the full picture is painted of how Bernie divided and conquered Formula 1 (and the used car world in London before any of that). Does he come out of it well? The big title on the front of this must-read is a bit of a giveaway...

Mark Tisshaw

Fast Lady - The Extraordinary Adventures of Dorothy Levitt

Dorothy Levitt, born in 1882, quickly made her mark on the automotive world, having graduated from being a typist at a firm selling cars such as De Dion-Boutons and Napiers to becoming the first woman in Britain to win a competitive motor event after she entered the Southport Speed Trials. She mastered not only speed but mechanics too, writing the handbook The Woman and the Car. One piece of advice has stood the test of time: the need for a hand mirror to check on the traffic behind, today known as the rear-view mirror. Another not so much: keeping a Colt 45 pistol in the glovebox... Her life story, which also includes multiple motoring offences, a stint as a chorus girl and plenty of illicit gambling before her abrupt death at 40, makes for a compelling read.

Rachel Burgess

All Arms and Elbows - Innes Ireland

Innes Ireland has never been one of the headline stars of the 1960s Formula 1 circus, so it’s good to read more about him and from his own hand. In typical fashion, the book starts off with a nervous moment, as Ireland feels he’s about to befall a ‘big one’, and it immediately brings to mind just how dangerous that era was. Anyone imagining the storytelling might be a bit dull because Ireland wrote this needsto think again. There’s a wonderful raw element to the prose, with plenty of light-hearted moments that seemed to pepper that era of F1. Nostalgia done well.