Beautiful Machines: The Era of the Elegant Sports Car

Beautiful Machines tells the stories of over 45 cars that defined the zeitgeist in thrilling detail, paired with gorgeous full-color photos in this lavish ode to the world’s greatest automobiles, and shows how the most successful grand touring cars became trailblazers for the mass-production automotive industry in the past and for the future. 

Start your engines for a grand tour of the most stylish grand motoring automobiles ever created. Evoking an era when elegance, romance, and outright performance defined the automobile — and the fascinating stories that made them icons of the road. From the shark-inspired Maserati Ghibli to the fiery Lamborghini Miura, from European elegance with American firepower such as the Iso Grifo and Facel Vega to the groundbreaking designs of the Alfa Romeo Tipo 33 Stradale and Renault Alpine and the advanced technology behind the Jensen FF or Porsche 918 Spyder — these cars are less transportation and more testaments to beauty, freedom, ambition, innovation, and speed.

This book was conceived and edited by gestalten. Stories are written by automobile expert Blake Z. Rong with a preface by Classic Driver’s Jan Baedeker and gestalten’s Robert Klanten.

About the Authors:

Blake Z. Rong is a freelance writer, editor and journalist whose work has appeared in Autoweek, Road & Track, Jalopnik, Automobile, and Petrolicious, among other publications. He grew up in Massachusetts and holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. He lives in New York with a cat named Moose.

Jan Baedeker writes about car culture, travel and design. He is the Creative Director and Editor-in-Chief at Classic Driver. In 2017, he co-edited Fast Forward — The Cars of the Future, The Future of Cars published by gestalten.