OVER HERE by Steve Miles

	The American car in England in the 1960’s Annual trips to the Earls Court Motor Show in the late 1950’s are perhaps what led car-mad schoolboy Steve Miles to fall in love with the sheer style of the products of the American motor industry. As a teenager in the sixties, he would spend as much free time as he could wandering the streets of his home town of Oxford, on the lookout for such machines to photograph, and even take regular trips by train or coach to London in pursuit of this rather eccentric hobby. The end result was, by 1970, a collection of around ten thousand pictures, all of American cars, taken on the highways of England. For many years, this incredible collection has lain untouched and unseen. But now, he has decided to unearth all those rare negatives, and to put together a selection of his pictures to be made available to the public; this book is the result. It is his intention to delve further into his enormous stack of negative files, and to produce additional volumes in the future, so that other enthusiasts can share in and enjoy these historic images. With so much material to go at, the process of selection could have been long and difficult, but Steve has chosen, in order not to delay the publication any longer than was necessary, to adopt a fairly simple approach. He has started at the top of the pile of negative files and worked down! Selecting pictures from these negatives of sufficient interest or rarity to justify inclusion, he simply put together a list of almost three hundred for this first book and then set about arranging them in a suitable order. The result, by chance rather than design, is a collection of pictures taken on the streets of London between 1964 and 1970. The images are divided into different manufacturers and then arranged by year of manufacture: each is captioned, the captions containing not only detail of the car which is its subject and some background information, but often a note of where the picture was taken, and the occasional personal observation, which results in a relaxed, chatty style of presentation. Some of the cars depicted are rare classics, others are quite mundane low-price models – but all were, at the time, in daily use. All, now, would be considered collectible. There are many gaps in this selection – but future volumes from his collection will go far towards infilling those gaps. The final result should be a valuable resource to students of the American car as it was in its heyday and a set of books to be read and treasured by enthusiasts of all ages. This first volume should be in the motoring bookstores in time to be an ideal Christmas present for all fathers / husbands / lovers / brothers / uncles / sons etc.. Volume two, which is likely to continue the story of the ‘Yank-Tank’ in London, is planned to be released in the Spring of 2005.		OVER HERE by Steve Miles hardback £19.95 ISBN 0-9545624-4-5 published by SGM Publishing
			Links: Homepage SGM Publishing Steven Miles biography 'Over Here' Order Form