Death Drive: There are no accidents
By Stephen Bayley
Stephen Bayley’s curatorial career has always been struck through with a love of cars. Whether writing on sex, taste, fashion, celebrity or aesthetics, the doyen of British design commentary can usually weave in an automotive anecdote or two. Death Drive combines all these preoccupations with a side order of morbid, as Bayley chronicles some of the most ‘iconic’ car crashes and misadventures, seeking out the indelible connections between cars, death and sex. Twenty tragic tales of those who drove themselves to an early end are presented within, some of which will be darkly familiar (James Dean, Camus and Princess Grace) and others a bit more obscure (Tara Browne, posthumously remembered in the Beatles’ ‘A Day in the Life’). Bayley’s eye for detail is present and correct – what’s the point of a car crash if the minutiae of make, model and road conditions aren’t chronicled? – as well as plenty of tabloidesque speculation.
Publishing by Circa Press, £29.95
Writer: Jonathan Bell. Photography: Michael Ainscough