The Audi 50 At 50, Germany’s First Small Car
15/04/2024
My Favourite Book – All Arms And Elbows – Innes Ireland
All Arms And Elbows by Innes Ireland has to be one of my favourite books. Even though I wasn’t even born when Innes was racing, I found the earlier days of motor sports fascinating. This grew into an interest in the cars, bikes and the drivers.
Back then the characters were larger than life. There weren’t the kinds of restrictions placed on personalities by the sponsors. There wasn’t a good clean corporate image to destroy as motor racing wasn’t commercialised all that time ago. Big business now dominates any motoring spectacle with all manner of things that go along with it.
Long gone are the days of sportscars with just a round white sticker with a number in the middle. Today it’s sometime hard to distinguish what you are looking at, many cars resembling disguised pre-production testbeds.
So, reading a book like All Arms And Elbows gives and insight to what it was like for Ireland and his pals. They used to socialise together, mess around, do daft and sometimes crazy things. You get the impression of comradery of the drivers in Irelands time. Maybe that has something to do with his time spent in the military in Egypt around the Suez Canal as a paratrooper.
Ireland’s working life started out at the Aero Engine Division of Rolls-Royce in Glasgow. Whilst testing and often breaking things it was clear that this wasn’t what he was cut out for. So, they sent him to the car repair workshops in London, back then the Rolls-Royce company still had a car division. During this period, Ireland was to enter his first race. Armed with a Bentley 3 Litre left to him by a family friend he entered the Tim Birkin memorial Trophy at Boreham in 1952.
This early period of motor racing was interrupted by his eighteen month stint in the army. So, Ireland was a little late when he came to Grand Prix racing. Having left active service, he set up a company servicing Rolls-Royce and Bentley cars and bought a Riley 9 to go racing in. Progress was swift and Ireland landed a drive with Team Lotus in 1957 and later a full works position after a year with Ecurie Ecosse in 1959.
Hire car stories, racing on the road and getting drunk and climbing clock towers seemed to be a job requirement for a driver back then. Life in motor sports was dangerous, but exciting. If Ireland had arrived earlier on the scene, he might have been a regular Grand prix winner, and more of a household name. If he had been born later, he may have never got in, the world of Formula One changing dramatically in the space of a decade.
Were things better back then? Maybe. Is it rose tinted spectacles? The technology wasn’t there, and neither was the reliability. But the drivers had to work to get the cars to finish. I suggest reading All Arms and Elbows to find out. Or many of the other books from that or earlier periods. But this is one of the most readable.
You might be able to find copies on eBay.co.uk, or eBay.com if you are in the US.
Sometimes Amazon will list a copy, but the first, second and the revised third editions weren’t printed in vast numbers. None are perfect, the first is more valuable, the second is ok. The third is bigger with more pictures and some colour, but also some errors.
So, we can’t see the antics of these kinds of characters, but we can read about them. It’s been 15 years since the last issue in 2005. Maybe it needs a fourth edition, or at least another Print run…
If you like your books more up to date, then have a look at Autopia by Jon Bentley. What the future may hold for the car and more worryingly the car enthusiast…
Simon
