Auto Biography: A Classic Car, an Outlaw Motorhead, and 57 Years of the American Dream - Softcover

Swift, Mr Earl

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0062282689 ISBN 13: 9780062282682

Publisher: Mariner Books, 2019

Synopsis

A brilliant blend of Shop Class as Soulcraft and The Orchid Thief, Earl Swift's wise, funny, and captivating Auto Biography follows an outlaw auto dealer as he struggles to save a rusted '57 Chevy--a car that has already passed through twelve pairs of hands before his--while financial ruin, government bureaucrats and the FBI close in on him.

Slumped among hundreds of other decrepit hulks on a treeless, windswept moor in eastern North Carolina, the Chevy evokes none of the Jet Age mystique that made it the most beloved car to ever roll off an assembly line. It's open to the rain. Birds nest in its seats. Officials of the surrounding county consider it junk.

To Tommy Arney, it's anything but: It's a fossil of the twentieth-century American experience, of a place and a people utterly devoted to the automobile and changed by it in myriad ways. It's a piece of history--especially so because its flaking skin conceals a rare asset: a complete provenance, stretching back more than fifty years.

So, hassled by a growing assortment of challengers, the Chevy's thirteenth owner--an orphan, grade-school dropout and rounder, a felon arrested seventy-odd times, and a man who's been written off as a ruin himself--embarks on a mission to save the car and preserve long record of human experience it carries in its steel and upholstery.

Written for both gearheads and Sunday drivers, Auto Biography charts the shifting nature of the American Dream and our strange and abiding relationship with the automobile, through an iconic classic and an improbable, unforgettable hero.

About this title

Review:

"A true tall tale that doubles as a complicated fable, Auto Biography is the wild and woolly saga of a 1957 Chevrolet station wagon, its 13 owners, and Tommy Arney, the appetite-forward, contradictorily honorable character who restores the four-door chariot to a glory even greater than its original."--Christian Science Monitor

"A fresh, personal perspective on America's love affair with the automobile."--Joe Bargmann, of Popular Mechanics, Road & Truck, and the wildly popular blog, "Backseat Driver"

"Fascinating... The author tells Arney's story deftly and with great, often raw, humor, and it rarely loses momentum."--Booklist

"[A] must read ... It's the bromance of the ages: a ruined man and and a ruined '57 Chevy find happiness in each other's arms."--New York Post

"Engrossing and entertaining.... The narrative tactfully unfolds with deeply human stories of struggle, ambition, hopes, dreams.... Swift is a wonderful guide and the stories he relates are engaging in their own right."--Publishers Weekly

"Dazzling. ... Many readers likely will feel the description Swift paints of Arney in the first page and a half of the book is worth the $26.99 price tag alone."--Daily Progress (Charlottesville, VA)

"Full of crackerjack reporting and fuel-injected mirth... Swift's lengthy step-by-step description of the disassembly and recreation process is as nail-biting as any drugstore action-thriller. It's hard to conceive of a more riveting (or unriveting) work on the subject than Auto Biography."--Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Entertaining and enlightening."--Fort Worth Star-Telegram

"Swift negotiates a phrase like a car with a tight turning radius."--The Durham Herald Sun

"An entertaining, surprisingly informative and action-packed tale."--Houston Chronicle

From the Back Cover:

An instant classic of automotive literature and a brilliantly unique examination of the modern American experience, Earl Swift's Auto Biography charts the unforgettable odyssey of one iconic 1957 Chevy wagon from gleaming symbol of Jet Age optimism to a rusted hulk--and the car's unlikely savior, a larger-than-life motorhead named Tommy Arney, who embarks on a mission to restore the Chevy to full glory before his own demons--and the FBI--doom him and the car.

About this edition

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 0062282689
• ISBN 13: 9780062282682
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384