A few years ago I started to write a book about the Ferrari 250 GTO. I talked to Innes Ireland, and he agree to write the forward and then he died 4 months later. I was so wound up that he had agreed - and even that he talked to some punk American (and invited me to tea). I got a chapter listing, chassis numbers, and started to put the race and ownership history together when I found out that he passed away. I lost my 'yeasty stream of conciousness'
because I was too excited about Innes being involved. I ended up dumping the whole thing into some forgotten corner of my 486 (though I have updated it with new PCs so I have not lost the info). 10 years or so later Keith Bluemel ended up doing the book I wanted to do (though with a lot less pictures).
About 8 years ago I decided I wanted to do a book on John Mecom and his race team (sorry - no Cobras - but he did have a (Chevy powered) Lola GT that was the progenitor to the GT40). Mecom was on board, and he had some photos and info available, but when I started talking to Friedman, LAT, and a couple of other photo archives about photo use I realised that this was going to be waaay to expensive to publish the way I wanted to. I also started adding up costs (and I had frequent flier miles) as well as vacation time to go to Texas to interview Mecom, Foyt, Hall, Johnson, then FL for Thompson, WI for Pabst, and then Penske, Andretti, and Unser...
My compliments to those of you who have actually done this sort of thing. I would love a 427 book - including racing history and road cars. I don't mind paying for quality. I have the Palawan Press Aston DB3S and DB4GTZ books - worth every penny.
Steve