The name stirs the passions of car lovers around the world, conjuring images of a sports car as unique as the country in which it was created. The car first hit showroom floors half a century ago, and the Corvette has been engaged in a love affair with sports car fans ever since. Long, low, sleek, and powerful, the Corvette's mix of raw V-8 power and sports car elegance have made it a true automotive icon. After fifty years and five generations of design, the Corvette has come to be America's pre-eminent sports car, offering the ultimate driving experience. Stunning photography combined with a well-researched history of the legendary model make this an essential book for anyone interested in the American sports car.
Photographer and writer, Randy Leffingwell, has more than 35 books in print, primarily on Americana subjects. These cover interests and areas as diverse as the American barn and Harley-Davidson motorcycles, California's wine country and John Deere farm tractors. His awareness of and attraction to moving things goes back as far as he can remember, to the first Dinky Toys and Match Box cars his father and mother gave him. His practical introduction to real sports cars came several years later when his uncle took him to watch a weekend of racing events at Meadowdale International Raceway in suburban Chicago.
Throughout all this time, however, he imagined himself becoming an architect and his life-long admiration of buildings and design began with frequent trips to downtown Chicago. While in undergraduate studies at Kansas University in the architectural engineering sequence, he discovered photography, journalism, and reawakened an earlier passion for writing. He scarcely looked back as he shifted his major studies from architecture, through English, Art History, psychology, and finally to the William Allen White school of Journalism for a BS in photojournalism.
Following graduation from KU, Randy began a successful career as a photojournalist first at the Kansas City TIMES, then joining the staff of the Chicago SUN-TIMES where he remained for nine years. He then worked as associate editor at AutoWeek magazine in Detroit, before being hired by the Los Angeles TIMES as a writer/photographer. He worked for the TIMES for 11 years, covering everything from news stories to personality profiles to food features throughout Italy, film festivals in France and Utah, and live theater in London. It was, he says, a great job and a great place to work.
His latest project is a large history of Harley-Davidson for them. During this project, he photographed 193 motorcycles from the Harley-Davidson Archives Collection and he completed the corresponding text for the book in early April 2007. Release of this 432 page book tentatively is scheduled for early 2008.