The Age of Combustion — Notes on Automobile Design

by Stephen Bayley

The auto­mo­bile is the ulti­mate ana­logue machine and mankind’s most inge­nious, seduc­tive and dam­ag­ing inven­tion. For over a cen­tu­ry, cars have pro­vid­ed ref­er­ence points for our notions of style, sta­tus and desire. In design terms, the Age of Com­bus­tion was as rich and var­ied as architecture’s Baroque – and far more pop­u­lar. And now it is com­ing to an end, as the inter­nal com­bus­tion engine is super­seded by the bat­tery and cars become wheeled com­put­ers, run­ning on AI not oil.

Togeth­er with a wide-rang­ing intro­duc­tion, this book repro­duces 60 of Stephen Bayley’s pop­u­lar month­ly columns for Octane, the out­stand­ing clas­sic car mag­a­zine where, for more than ten years, he has pro­vid­ed the most con­sis­tent and insight­ful com­men­tary on car cul­ture, often based on priv­i­leged access to indus­try insid­ers. The Age of Com­bus­tion is a thren­ody for the automobile.

Buch, Hardcover, 16 x 21 cm, 228 Seiten, 24 doppelseitige s/w-Abbildungen, englischer Text