Top Gear: The Cool 500 by Matt Master

Subtitled ‘The Coolest Cars Ever Made’, this is a large format book about cars through history, glossy photos and all. Some people love Top Gear, and some people love to hate it, but both camps would agree that it has a certain confident, often arrogant, style that’s tongue in cheek enough to be entertaining. This book doesn’t really have that style – author Matt Master works for Top Gear Magazine, not the show itself. What we are left with is a whole load of pictures of cars, no better or worse than any number of similar books.

The notion of what constitutes a ‘cool’ car is pretty flexible. Some might suggest that an environmentally friendly car is cool, but here, no. Coolness also has to be more or less evenly distributed across decades, which is pretty tricky. Some cars are simply historically important, whereas some seem cool by association – the Ford Mustang is a reasonable inclusion because Steve McQueen drove one in Bullitt, while the Porsche Spyder is bizarrely included because James Dean died driving one. A neat little present for any kid who’s a fan of the show, but adults will quickly want something more substantial. [Richard Robeson]