Don't Look Back: It's Gaining on Us.(competitions of car racing)(Column)

Byline: Kevin A. Wilson

Nostalgia,'' novelist Peter DeVries wrote 30-some years ago, "isn't what it used to be.'' Researching background for a pair of recent trips brought this to mind. I went with Bentley to England's Brooklands racetrack for the track's 100th anniversary, and a few weeks later, I dropped in for part of the Great American Race.

For the first, I found a copy of Ken Purdy's The Kings of the Road, a book not only older than I but older than I remembered. When I read this paean to the grand old marques in my elementary school library in '63, it never registered on me that it was already a vintage piece from the late '40s. There are many reasons I ended up in this profession, but The Kings of the Road counts as one. I wanted to revisit it, particularly the stories about the Bentley Boys and Brooklands.

It turns out to be a period piece-or maybe I've just seen too much. The prose is still lovely, but there's a lot of romanticized rubbish. No famous man or car has flaws, and there's a hazy golden glow over it all. When I was eight, I swallowed it all in one sitting, but as a ...