Most car magazines are written by and for people who move their lips when they read. This is a little disconcerting for the thinking gearhead. Honest, intelligent opinions about cars and the auto industry can be hard to come by. But without Car & Driver magazine, finding such opinions might well be impossible.

The magazine celebrated its 50th year of publication during 2005 with a year-long flood of special content, peaking with a special 50th anniversary issue this July, along with a weekend-long party at (where else?) the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. But one part of that celebration is just now trickling out to customers: a high-quality coffee-table book published by Hachette Filipacchi, the magazine's current owners.

Written by former C/D staffer Martin Padgett, the book covers the magazine's history, from its roots as a regional racing-enthusiast publication, through its difficult first few years as a pro-import voice amid the golden age of big Detroit iron, lingering extensively during the muscle-car era of the late 1960s, then sort of rushing the reader through the magazine's most recent quarter-century. A number of the magazine's greatest articles and editorials are reproduced in whole or part, including the infamous "GTO vs. GTO" article of 1964, which established C/D's tone as an irreverent, iconoclastic voice for the thinking car geek. You can also read Brock Yates' account of the real "Cannonball Run," an actual coast-to-coast road race held on multiple occasions in the years prior to the Burt Reynolds/Dom DeLuise farce. An infamous multi-car comparison held in Baja California is also reprinted, along with lurid accounts of dead cows, morditas, and flooded Nissans. Long-time C/D staffer Patrick Bedard was the first automotive journalist to qualify for the Indy 500; his account of a horrific crash in the 1984 race is compelling reading for anybody who's ever dreamed of racing at Indy, and fortunately, it's in this book. Padgett even includes his own very funny account of a one-night stint in the Joie Chitwood Thrill Show as a "human battering ram."