Beach Racers

Just picked up Dick Punnett's, "Beach Racers: Daytona Before NASCAR". It appears to be a repackaging of his earlier, "Racing on the Rim" (now in a smaller format with matte, rather than glossy pages).

This is a decent history of land speed record racing on Ormond Beach at the turn of the 20th Century. A little of everything ran there, electrics, steam, and gasoline. For a long time it was the speed capital of the US attracting a number of pioneers, wealthy sportsman, and struggling manufacturers (like Henry Ford).

The pictures are important as Punnett manages to have included three of J Walter Christie's front wheel drive (FWD) monsters. There isn't much information available regarding Christie's cars in popular automotive literature, and not much mention of them on the web. Someday, a scour of a couple of automotive libraries may yield more details.