Nothing Handles Like a Rental Car

Book excerpt: This book is about road trips with a reason; retracing the steps of some well-known motorsport heroes like Fangio and Hopkirk, and less well-known (but no less interesting) men like Roy 'The Weasel' James, Jock Horsfall and Captain Albert Ball. There's some Hermann G�ring-inspired barnstorming too, thanks to lax security at an unnamed airfield.Starting with a �100 trip to Stelvio in a rented Fiat 500 and ending up hooning around France in a broken press fleet Maserati, the author unwittingly goes from weekend roadtripper to ham-footed TV presenter. Vehicles as diverse as the Volvo Laplander, Morgan 3 Wheeler and Mercedes 190E Cosworth all feature, in locations such as Zandvoort, Las Vegas and Sicily. Even time stuck in the office doesn't stop the mischief, with an amusing spell of chasing the ambulance chasers.This book is a loose collection of light-hearted and mildly incriminating stories from around Europe. It contains photographs, bad maps and a useless guide to dealing with foreign police. There are twelve uses of the word 'Porsche', six of the word 'apex' and one of the word 'frenulum'. Nothing handles like a rental car.