Brad Bowling


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All photos and articles on this Web site were created by Brad Bowling, unless otherwise indicated.
Please do not duplicate anything you see on these pages without permission.

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Limited Availability for The Saleen Book!

Did you know that The Saleen Book: 20 Years of Saleen Mustangs 1984-2003 is selling on eBay for as high as $152.00 a copy? Other eBay sellers are regularly offering copies for $99 a book.

If you weren’t able to get a copy of The Saleen Book during its initial run, there is still a chance to fill that empty spot in your automotive library. Driveway Books has temporarily depleted its inventory of copies, but we are aware of one source that has a few copies left. NOTE: This is not a reprint or second edition, but surplus copies the printer (an avid Saleen/Mustang collector) bought for his own use during the initial run.

The Saleen Book: 20 Years of Saleen Mustangs includes a full-color history chapter for each year of Saleen production; the all-encompassing Owners Registry, which lists specs and available information on more than 7,000 individual Saleen Mustangs; an extensive media bibliography; and sidebars on cars of interest from the past two decades. The Saleen Book is 430 pages in a hardback format, and all copies we sell include the original dust jacket. The book was written, graphically designed, printed and bound in the United States of America.

Automotive journalist and former Saleen publicist Brad Bowling wrote The Saleen Book from an insider’s angle that gives his story a uniquely intimate perspective. Illustrating the book are more than 500 of the 8,000 slides Bowling shot of original, unmodified cars as he traveled coast-to-coast researching this book, as well as many from Steve Saleen’s company archives.

To order a copy of this rare and desirable piece of automotive history, contact Greg Wackett at saleenlocator@yahoo.com.

• Read Book Reviews

FedExtra

Remember the 2000 movie Cast Away, where Tom Hanks flies around the world setting up branches of the overnight delivery service FedEx? His character lived all over the world, always improving productivity in one location before moving on to the next outpost.

Then one foggy Christmas Eve (where’s Rudolph when you need him?), Hanks’ management career began a four-year hiatus when his airplane crashed in the Pacific, during which time he stabbed fish with sticks, lost 40 pounds and befriended a volleyball named Wilson.

• Read the complete story I wrote for the January '07 Modified Mustangs magazine.

Cord 812 Hot Rod

In 1949, an auto enthusiast and aspiring racer named Ray Smith was making $50 a week when he located and bought a Cord 812 Beverly. Smith owned the 13-year-old dream car for less than two years, during which time it became a nightmare.

“I sold it after replacing two sets of transmission gears at $285 each time,” Smith recalled. “But I always wanted to drive that beautiful car without worrying about mechanical problems. In the early ‘90s, I decided to build one with a modern engine, but it took awhile for my wife Linda and me to find a suitable body.”

• Read the complete story I wrote for the '06 Fall Food Lion AutoFair.

Building the Big Thing

We weren’t prepared for such a detailed answer when we met Kevin Solesbee at a small car show and innocently asked, “So, who did the work on your Mustang?”

Maybe it’s because Kevin is such a nice guy who doesn’t like to leave anybody out or maybe it’s because his hometown of Concord, North Carolina, is ground zero for about a hundred sponsor-lovin’ NASCAR teams – either way, his reply would have made Sunday’s Nextel Cup winner proud by including everybody who ever turned a wrench on or pointed a spray nozzle at the ’95 GT known locally as the “Big Thing.”

• Read the complete article I wrote for the June '06 Modified Mustangs magazine.

Shadrach - The Going Thing

We’re standing in a nest of Russian L-39 trainer jets at a private airport in Gadsden, Alabama. From soaring distance, we would look like a worm the baby birds are too awkward to slurp up. The temperature on this March day is a record-low 25 degrees but 450mm of Canon autofocus glass creates a weak, heat-like shimmer as we study the object of our fascination.

The wave in the air makes the scene mythic, cause for goosebumps – or is it the cold crawling up our arms? The blue Mustang sits at one end of a long taxiway revving its engine, bragging in short barks that horsepower is about to kick inertia’s butt. Clutch dropped, the blue coupe accelerates like a bullet from a gun barrel – no drama, no squealing tires, just a Mustang on a short, urgent mission.

• Read the complete article I wrote for the August '06 Modified Mustangs magazine

History of the Cobra

SVT, which stands for Special Vehicle Team, started in 1991 as the high-performance, limited-edition arm of Ford Motor Company, with the initial goal of taking the long-in-the-tooth Mustang platform to new levels of speed and handling.

Deliberation over the name of the new steroid-fed pony was quick and decisive – it would be called “Cobra” after the world-class sports cars Carroll Shelby began producing and selling through Ford dealerships in 1962. Although production barely topped the 1,000 mark before the end in 1967, Shelby’s Cobra roadsters and coupes were the cars to beat on the track and on the street for the rest of the decade – leaving everything from Corvettes to Ferraris in their wake.

• Read the complete story I wrote for the '03 Spring Food Lion AutoFair.