A deep dive into a fascinating motorsports backwater

“This is the kind of book I like, recording all the ‘runts in the litter’ so to speak,” says well-known motoring writer Graham Gauld. Robert Young documents in Special Brew the fascinating story of the Formula One and Libre specials that competed in the South African Drivers’ Championship in its ‘golden age’ of the late 1950s and 1960s. Impecunious enthusiasts conceived and built these racing specials, the ‘runts in the litter’ to some, at a time when state-of-the-art machinery from abroad was unattainable or beyond their means. The result was the flowering of ingenious home-built designs such as Peter de Klerk’s Alfa Special, Doug Serrurier’s LDS marque, Gordon Henderson’s Scorpions and Tony Kotze’s low-slung Assegai. Complemented by a remarkable array of photographs, many in colour, Special Brew tells the story of these cars and the personalities associated with them in great detail, revealing many little-known facts, some drawn from the author’s own observation while attending the events and from interviews with the personalities involved. This truly unique and ‘special’ book perfectly captures the atmosphere of racing at the time.