Wide-Open Muscle. The rarest muscle car convertibles by Randy Leffingwell. Photography by Tom Loeser.
Randy Leffingwell is an established writer of automotive books. His fast knowledge of American cars and of the Porsche is impressive. He combines insight into the technical data with historical details. Supported by an impressive network in the automotive scene.
But beside his writing skills he has become an expert in what he and photographer Tom Loeser name “light painting”. It results in photos with a black background emphasizing the car in a perfect light.
Wide-Open Muscle by Randy Leffingwell. Photography by Tom Loeser
For one of his previous books, Randy worked with 'The Brothers' and seeing so many unique big-block convertibles, it didn’t take long to decide to do a book on these cars covering 30 cars from The Brothers collection.
The regulations in those days required that racing cars needed to be street legal. However, racers would never consider using an open top car for racing. Not strong enough, not rigid enough and not safe enough. But for the streets it was a perfect combination of power and coolness.
1965 Pontiac GTO
Leffingwell presents the cars in three parts; the Chrysler Corporation, the Ford motor Company and General Motors.
1967 Chevrolet Corvette 427 L68 Convertible
One of the first artists interviews I did was with Etienne Carignan. He had just completed an illustration of the Plymouth Roadrunner and I fell in love with that car. Randy spends a full chapter on the convertible version of this cartoon inspired car. The rapid flightless bird can be found in several places on the car and the engineers even installed a “beep-beep” horn . Eventually the Plymouth road runner became Chrysler Corporations purest muscle car.
Wide-Open Muscle by Randy Leffingwell. Photography by Tom Loeser.
Wide-Open Muscle by Randy Leffingwell. Photography by Tom Loeser.
Wide-Open Muscle by Randy Leffingwell. Photography by Tom Loeser.
This is one of those books that belongs in each men’s mancave where you enjoy showing these cars to your buddies, while sharing dreams about your next car and bragging about the performance of your muscle car. A real must have!
This book is available at: Motorbooks
