Best Damn Garage in Town: My Life & Adventures

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book!
Review: Being a longtime fan of racing and interested in the history of the sport, I expected this book to give readers a glimpse behind the scenes from one of it's most legendary and colorful characters. It exceeded any of my expectations. As noted in other reviews, the story is told first hand as if you were sitting and talking to Smokey, language and all. Not a drawback in my opinion but consider yourself warned.

The book begins from Smokey's childhood and moves quickly through his bomber runs in WWII. Some of the most insightful war stories I've ever read! Then it's of to Daytona Beach and the establishment of the Best Damn Garage in Town. During this timeframe Smokey gets involved with NASCAR, the France family and the car manufacturers. It's refreshing to finally read stories about NASCAR that have not been censored in any way and are being told by somebody who was actually there. Smokey was very opinionated but 99% of the time he's right. Especially in aspects relating to safety.

One very interesting chapter is devoted to the 50 or so drivers who drove for him, both in NASCAR and Indy. These included some of the biggest names in racing during this timeframe. A tremendous amount of information is passed along about the drivers, some good and some I'm sure they wished Smokey would have kept quiet about. All in all a great chapter.

From there it's on to the Indy 500. This was during the glory days of the Indy 500 when creativity and a skinny rule book led to some of the most interesting racecars Indy has ever seen. Obviously, this was right up Smokey's alley. Let's just say that Smokey's Indy exploits, both on and off the track, could have comprised an entire second book. I especially enjoyed his thoughts on returning Indy to it's previous glory.

The final section is devoted to his inventions. You'd better be fairly technical to understand it but the stories still carry it.

One ongoing theme throughout the book is Smokey's relationship with the auto manufacturers. Not just with low end engineers, he was rubbing elbows with the heads of GM and Ford. A pleasant surprise was the insight into the auto industry as it existed during the time.

All in all a very good book. Yes, it tends to be repetitve at times and Smokey's style takes some getting used to but the content more than makes up for it.

Racing's history is slowly disappearing as the old timers leave us but at least one of them put his thoughts down on paper before he passed on. Racing lost one of it's most colorul characters in 2001 but his legacy lives on in this book.

Rating:
Summary: Worth buying and reading
Review: Wow, this is going to be a difficult review. I'll get the bad stuff out of the way first since it's easy to explain. First, it's written probably just as Smokey would speak it, so it's full of gramatical and syntax errors, reasonably graphic and vulgar, and his english ain't so good. Also, because of how the book is organized (each chapter seemed like a person's entire life) he ends up repeating himself quite a bit.
All of that being said, I am glad I read it. Smokey was one interesting character, and much wiser than he gives himself credit for, or anyone else probably ever gave him. I complain about the familiar way in which it was written, but that actually is a plus most of the time.