Hitherto, the (English-language) reader seeking to understand the rise of motoring as a mass activity in England has had a rather thin historiography on which to draw. David Jeremiah's work Representations of British Motoring, then, is timely and most welcome as an informed general reader on a century of motoring in Britain. It is the first to marry art history with motoring history to explore patterns of representation of the car and motoring and note their change and innovation. Jeremiah argues that representations of motoring and motor cars have been used as “markers” of “period, social style and value” (1), and it is the memorable image that has defined and authenticated our concepts of progress and pleasure.

Representations of British Motoring uses, in the main, representations in the form of art illustrations and photographs drawn from motoring magazines, company brochures, and advertising material. It has three dominant themes running throughout—the new model, the motorists, and the motoring landscape—and its three parts each follow a chronological thread roughly equally split in length. The first looks at the period to 1906 and argues convincingly that much of the subsequent concerns of motorists were put in place during this time. The possibilities for individual freedom that a car could offer were becoming realities, and motoring was portrayed (especially in Motor) as an aspiration for the millions. In encouragement of this, the Automobile Association's new signs began to define a new relationship between the metropolis and countryside. The appearance of the car became increasingly associated with performance and status, and aspects of reliability and safety were underlined by representations of woman drivers in advertising.

Part 2 explores the motoring “agenda” established by 1906 to consider the period to 1940. The Austin 7 of the 1920s changed forever the idea of the small car. Now within the reach of the lower middle class, it was also marketed as a second car for the upper class. Advertisers drew on how a sense of national difference translated into British practicality: the 1920s saw a reliance on aspects of British “genius.” And despite the shift to mass production, somehow traditional British workmanship survived the assembly line process. Women drivers were expected to conform to a social order and endured something of a male backlash in the pages of Motor in the 1920s. Appearance, style, and fashion, replacing function, became marketing standards by the late 1920s; by the 1930s, the “homogeneous” car had arrived, with engineering and aesthetics in harmony. The culture of the garage forecourt was created, and as the landscape was increasingly altered by road widening and straightening, the motor trade saw benefits in its identification with the protection of the countryside. As the debate raged over the concept of a “safe speed,” advertisers relied on the assumption that cars were safe; if the new model was faster, it was still safe because it had bigger brakes.

By the 1930s, motoring had filtered down the social scale, but luxury and style remained the dream. And here, the third part is concerned with discourses after 1940 and associates the shift from the make-do-and-mend culture immediately postwar to a do-it-yourself culture epitomized by the first Haynes manual in 1960. British motor makers were confused about how to respond to the international market, but grand tourers by Bristol, Lagonda, and Jaguar opted to follow Autocar's advice for elegance in their dignity and restraint. Meanwhile, Shell, for one, continued to emphasize its apparent concern for the environment by publishing books on trees to encourage the motorist to drive into the countryside. The arrival of Small Car magazine in 1962 was based on the briefly held view that most owners had small cars; by 1965 the magazine was rebranded as Car, and in the course of the next few decades the small “world” car, with big car qualities, had become universal, and sexuality in advertising, increasingly apparent. Advertisers ensured that excitement had become part of the motoring mainstream.

This is a book concerned in the main with the lesser mundane image; motoring landscape and values were shaped as much by road signs or petrol retailers. Art illustrators were important in conveying the imagery of the open road and unspoiled countryside; the output of artist-illustrators such as F. Gordon Crosby, Guy Lipscombe, Max Millar, and Bryan de Grineau is particularly noted. Their novel techniques to promote the car included the use of cutaway drawings or setting cars against the background of the modern city.

There is little other quality work against which to measure Jeremiah. In his concentration on the visual, he adds an additional dimension to themes raised by, say, Sean O’Connell in his 1998 The Car in British Society, so often the point of reference for any serious study of British motoring. With Jeremiah's discussion of how representations create and sustain “myths” of motoring, other outputs show he is very much in tune with recent thinking—I have in mind here specifically the 2007 international exhibition Mitomacchina (Myth machines) at the Italian Museum of Modern Art, studying the history, technology, and future of car design. Yet the feeling remains that this book has been hammered down to fit in with the constraints of Manchester University Press's Studies in Design series. Representations of British Motoring has a chronological and thematic spread so ambitious that it should have had a much more generous word count, if not additional volumes. Accordingly, each section lacks an introduction and conclusion, with the one short introductory chapter sufficing to contextualize the entire book. The footnotes are impressive in their primary spread but curious in their scant reference to secondary texts, particularly where these are needed for contextualization. And despite its eighty-odd illustrations, there were nowhere near enough, and it was frustrating to have descriptions of pictures with so often no accompanying image. There are irritating proofing gripes, too, but all this detracts little: while this book could, and should, have been longer, it is absorbing, fascinating, and wide ranging and has raised the game for historians seeking to understand motoring culture in Britain.