BOOK REVIEW:  By Brooks Too Broad for Leaping

by     Denise McCluggage
Trade Paperback (December 1994)  
Fulcorte Press; ISBN: 0964230909
(Note: This book is hard to find, but worth it!)

reviewed by Kelly Ferjutz, published author and racing enthusiast

  . . . but fast is more fun . . . 

I love wallowing around in the past. Um, excuse me, I should say meandering through recent history, all the more fascinating when you can remember it!

If you were a teenager in the years 1948 to 1960 or so, you may well recall the first invasion of those funny little foreign sports cars, brought over here from Europe. They all only came from Europe then, and folks really did call them that, 'funny little foreign sports cars'--or 'sporty cars'. It made no difference really to the masses, anything that wasn't made in this country got lumbered with that designation.  If you were at all interested in cars during those years, then you would love this book.  In the late 50s--early 60s, when I first started driving, I didn't want to be LIKE Denise McCluggage. No, I wanted to BE Denise McCluggage. Obviously, that couldn't work. This book is almost the next best thing.

She could have been the prototype for the Wonder Woman of the comics and TV, except the comic book version is older than she is, I suspect. It seems there was nothing she couldn't be--or do. A gifted descriptive writer, Ms. McCluggage was also a top-notch race car driver and skier, and could probably have held her own in today's WNBA, as well.

To know why the reality of this book is so special, one has only to read the quote on page 177. Already a ranked driver in 1958, she was was refused entry at Le Mans. "The head of the organizing committee had told Luigi (Chinetti): 'This is an invitational race, and we do not choose to invite women."  We have indeed come a long way, baby, in the intervening 43 years!

She also had the great talent of being in the right place at usually the right time. She got that story, or that ride, and proceeded to make it her own. Celebrities became her friends long before they became celebrities to the rest of the world. Some few of them were gone from us before we even knew them very well, but she allows them to live on in the pages of this book, drawn from her columns in Autoweek Magazine. 

Competition Press was the Bible of the racing world in the late 60s--mid 70s, and that was her creation, too. It was required reading for anyone caught up in the whirl of motor racing, as I was, then. I was in good company, though. And you will be, too, if you  remember the names of Fangio, and Moss, and Hill, and Briggs and Shelby and Ginther,     and the list goes on and on and on. Some of the ones we didn't have time to know as well are treated just as fondly: Peter Collins, Mike Hawthorne, Jo Bonnier, Taffy von Trips, Jean Behra, the Rodriguez brothers, and on and on.

But it wasn't only drivers who became her friends and/or companions. No, there was Steve McQueen (before he became the film star we know him as) and Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, Cal Tjader (before they became the jazz greats we know them as). And we mustn't forget the tracks with those magical names that will live forever in her words: Mille Miglia, Targa Florio, Nurburgring, Le Mans, Goodwood, Sebring, Monza, and the Speed Weeks at Nassau and Daytona Beach.     

And the cars. Oh, my! The marques that live no longer:  No one, and I do mean no one, wanted a Mini-Moke more than I did. My heart nearly broke for the wanting of it. The closest I could ever get to it was an MG1100. Not the same thing.  I did once have a very -much-driven BMW, though, and even a Formula Vee. But who wouldn't ache for an original Maserati or Delahaye, a Gordini or Stanguellini, Vanwall or OSCA.

If this book were to be scored on a numerical basis of 1 to 100, say, with 100 being the ultimate accolade, then this one would definitely be 99 and 44/100% perfect! An index would have given it that extra little something. But yet, reading these short (mostly four pages worth at a time) reprinted columns is perhaps enhanced by never quite knowing which name will pop off the next page as you carefully turn that corner, er, page, to the next episode.  

My favorite? Actually, there two. 'Driving through France (page 123) and 'Ring around the 'Ring' (131).  For different reasons. I always wanted to see the 'old' Ring, where my Dad used to walk over from his near-by village for the big races, and instilled that love in me, as well, and the other? Read it for yourself, and you'll know why.

Oh, marvelous, indeed. Now that I'm older and hopefully wiser, I realize that there could only ever have been one Denise McCluggage, and it wasn't my turn! Darn.