Death Drive

New edition of Stephen Bayley’s classic text (a Times Book of the Year, 2016) on the historic place of the automobile in the modern imagination. His exploration of the circumstances of 24 celebrity car crashes is now expanded with two further essays - on Princess Diana and Ayrton Senna. "This is not a book for those who are only interested in cars. It is a compelling, sometimes uncomfortable journey through our fascination with speed, status and mortality..." — NL Magazine Cars have a talismanic quality. No other manufactured object has the same disturbing allure. More emotions are involved in cars and car design than in any other product: vanity, cupidity, greed, social competitiveness and cultural modelling. But when all this perverse promise ends in catastrophe, these same talismanic qualities acquire an extra dimension. The car crash is a defining phenomenon of popular culture. Death Drive is both an appreciative essay about the historic place of the automobile in the modern imagination and a detailed exploration of the circumstances of 24 celebrity car crashes, from Isadora Duncan in an Amilcar, in 1927, to Helmut Newton in a Cadillac, in 2004. The author concludes by confronting the imminent demise of the car itself.

Pages: 256, Edition: 2nd ed., Paperback, Circa