How Cars Work

If you or someone you know needs to learn the basics about cars, you need two books: How Cars Work and Auto Upkeep: Basic Car Care. Both are great gifts for new drivers. I purchase How Cars Work and Auto Upkeep: Basic Car Care for my nieces and nephews when they turn 16. Being an automobile technician, I think everyone that drives cars should know a little about them. How Cars Work does a great job using drawings to show car parts and what they do. Auto Upkeep: Basic Car Care uses actual photos to show parts. Auto Upkeep also explains how to buy a car and choose automobile insurance. How Cars Work includes a worksheet for review at the end of each chapter, while Auto Upkeep: Basic Car Care has a CD with review activities and internet links.

I saw this book on my friends front room table and I was so impressed with the cover I had to open the book. Wow, what a book, I was overwhelmed by all the information pictures and words that I had heard but never understood. As I read through it, I knew I had to have it. I went out and bought three of them and gave one to my friends daughter who is 15 and eager to drive. I never had a book like this when I was growing -up and I think this is important info for anyone who doesn't know anything about cars. Terrific book! Buy it and you will see how helpful it could be for everyone in the family. Thanks for writing this book.

I was planning to perform all the maintenance work on my 2 cars, an Audi S4 and a Honda CR-V. I have done oil changes and air filter changes in the past but I wanted to do more. I bought this book and the "Auto Repairs for Dummies" book in addition to the specific service manuals for the 2 cars. This book gives very very brief explanations with big text fonts and big pictures (not much meat) of how things work so don't hope to perform any actual work by following the book. If you just want to know how cars work and don't wish to perform any actual work then this book may be is for you. I highly recommend the dummy book and forget about this book if you do plan to perform work on your car. The dummy book has a lot more details and it actually shows you how to do the work. I often turned to the dummy book when the service manuals are not explaining things in detail.

I consider this book is a "must have" for anyone except perhaps auto technicians. I am a novice when it comes to car parts. I heard of or knew of (or I think I knew) terms like "Front Wheel Drive", "Rear Wheel Drive", and many other common car terms but I can't tell them when I check my car. But after only a few hours reading on this book, all these common car terms in my brain and their inner relateness begin to fall into their rightful places. THIS BOOK IS THAT GOOD.

What make this book stand out are :

1. The authur strived for clarity while not skimp on details either. The writing is in clear, concise, to the point fashion that leaves no ambiguity but contains enough details to out-content many 300+ page auto books (It must be a fashion these days. I found many such thick books wasted much of their contents on third-rate humors /jokes I found annoying while wasted rest of their contents on ambiguous, not to the point technical writing. To those authors, I will say : PLEASE, either be a stand up comedian or a technical writer, but not BOTH. If you do both, you will fail at both).

2. Detailed illustrations. Almost 50% of this book is devoted to detailed illustrations. Each page deals with a specific car part (be it crankshaft, fuel pump, timing chain, or else) - half of that page is technical writing, another half is detailed illustration. The illustration is not just for that specific part alone. It also illustrates other related parts in the same subsystem so you understand how the part works within the group that it belongs.

The book comes in 96 pages but in generous 8.5 inches x 11 inches size. That's how such detailed illustration is able to fit into half of page. Another thing I like is that the pages are made of high grade, pure-white (not tinted, or neutral colors) paper. Very few books these days are made from such good papers.

A GOOD BASIC OVERVIEW OF HOW A CAR WORKS, NICE TO HAVE FOR REVIEW.