Those wonderful old automobiles

Here's what an ad for this book said in 1958: "A colorful and nostalgic compendium of five hundred photographs, old songs, jokes and 20,000 words of text about the pioneer American car companies which produced their first gas, steam and electric buggies around the turn of the century and are still in existence today. Over half the book is devoted to the twenty-one surviving makes from the horseless buggy days - who built them, where and when; who rode and raced in them; what they looked like and how they performed. But Mr. Clymer also presents, with gusto and gaiety, other characteristics and oddities of the early auto age - the weird laws that frustrated early motorists and protected Old Dobbin ; the first gasoline stations (blacksmith shops) and auto accessories (including patent leather license plates) ; the outlandish fashions and wonderful songs that the new four-wheeled phenomenon inspired ; the racers, hot rods and strange contraptions that hit the roads - and often each other - with such impact. 220 pages, 500 illustrations."