 |
Karl E. Ludvigsen | |
|---|---|
| Born | April 24, 1934 Kalamazoo, Michigan |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Alma mater | Pratt Institute |
| Genre | Automotive journalism |
| Relatives | Elliot "Lud" Ludvigsen (father) |
| Website | |
| www | |
Karl E. Ludvigsen (born April 24, 1934) is a journalist, author, and historian of the automotive industry and motor sports.
Karl E. Ludvigsen was born on April 24, 1934, in Kalamazoo, Michigan. [1] [2] He was the son of Elliot "Lud" Ludvigsen, an engineer and executive of Eaton Corporation. [3]
Karl Ludvigsen has been resident in England since 1980 and lives in Suffolk with his wife Annette.
He graduated Cum Laude from Phillips Exeter Academy, and attended both the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, studying engineering, and Pratt Institute where he matriculated in industrial design. [1]
In 1958–59, he served in the US Army Signal Corps in West Germany. [1]
Ludvigsen worked as a designer at General Motors in 1956, Ludvigsen planned experimental front-drive prototypes. He also worked on the design and development of heavy-duty truck transmissions in the engineering and experimental departments of the Fuller Manufacturing, a subsidiary of the Eaton Corporation. As a public-affairs official with General Motors Overseas Operations in the 1960s, Ludvigsen was responsible for all the company's product information outside the USA. He also supervised its financial advertising abroad. Prior to that, he assisted the General Motors technical staffs in press relations, with special emphasis on the Styling Staff.
When Ludvigsen was president of Formula 1 Enterprises, an importer and distributor of motor vehicle equipment, several of his friends were injured in motor racing accidents. This led him and his company to become active in racing safety at the end of the 1960s. Ludvigsen helped invent the practical modern Halon-gas fire extinguishing system for racing vehicles and founded the Motor Racing Safety Society to bring together professionals working in this field.
At the end of the 1970s, Ludvigsen joined Fiat Motors of North America as vice president of corporate affairs, with responsibilities including legal affairs and relations with customers, dealers, governments and the press. He took part in the product development of Fiat and Lancia cars both in the US and Turin. His team obtained unprecedented public awareness for Fiat, Lancia, and Ferrari products in the United States and successfully launched the Fiat Strada range.
In 1980, Ludvigsen joined Ford of Europe as a vice president. One of his briefs for Ford included government affairs. This included European governmental assessments and lobbying activities, as well as the preparation and presentation of Ford's External Factors Study, a ten-year rolling forecast of the external environment within which Ford would operate in Europe.
Another Ford of Europe responsibility for Ludvigsen was Ford's European motor sports activity. This encompassed the design, engineering, tooling, production, marketing, distribution and sale throughout Europe of special automobiles, light trucks and parts. He was in charge of the design and launching of the RS1600i Escort, which was named Motor Sports Car of the Year in France and which led Ford's RS Products operation to record profitability. In addition, Ludvigsen played a key role in the creation of the AC-Ghia and Barchetta prototype sports cars.
Ludvigsen began his automotive writing and editing for MIT's Tech Engineering News in 1953. [2] He has served as technical editor of both Auto Age and Sports Cars Illustrated , east coast editor of Motor Trend and editor of Car and Driver . [1] [2] [4]
As an author, co-author or editor Ludvigsen has some four dozen books to his credit. Four Ludvigsen books concern the Chevrolet Corvette, one of them that was credited with sparking the Corvette hobby. He has written three times about Mercedes-Benz, twice about its racing cars. His books on the latter subject have won the Montagu Trophy (once) and the Nicholas-Joseph Cugnot Award (twice), [note 1] both recognizing outstanding automotive historical writing. In 2001 he again received the Cugnot award from the Society of Automotive Historians (SAH) for his book about the early years of the Volkswagen, Battle for the Beetle. In 2002, he was named a Friend of Automotive History by the SAH, the Society's highest award.
Since 1997, Ludvigsen has been drawing on the photographic resources of the Ludvigsen Library to write and illustrate books on the great racing drivers. His first title in this series was Stirling Moss: Racing with the Maestro. He followed this with Jackie Stewart: Triple-Crowned King of Speed and Juan Manuel Fangio: Motor Racing's Grand Master. Fourth in this series for Haynes Publishing was Dan Gurney: The Ultimate Racer and fifth was Alberto Ascari: Ferrari's First Double Champion. [6] Sixth and seventh in the series are Bruce McLaren—Life and Legacy of Excellence and Emerson Fittipaldi—Heart of a Racer.
Also in the field of motor sports, Karl Ludvigsen has written about the cars of the Can-Am series, the AAR Eagle racing cars, the Ford GT40s and Prime Movers, the story of Britain's Ilmor Engineering. His introduction to At Speed, a book of Jesse Alexander's racing photography, won the Ken W. Purdy Award for Excellence in Automotive Journalism. Other motor-sports titles include Classic Grand Prix Cars, a history of the front-engined G.P. car, and Classic Racing Engines, Ludvigsen's personal selection of 50 notable power units.
Karl Ludvigsen is the author of definitive histories of Porsche and Opel. His Porsche history, Excellence was Expected, is considered to be a model of the researching and writing of the history of an auto company. The updated edition was published in three volumes by Bentley Publishers in 2003. In 1997, Ludvigsen researched and wrote the catalogue for a special exhibition of Ferrari technological innovations on the occasion of the company's 50th anniversary and contributed a major section to the company's official 50-year history. He updated and expanded this work for Ferrari's 60th anniversary in 2007. He is the author of a series of monographs on great Maserati cars.
In co-operation with publisher Iconografix, Ludvigsen has established a series of photographic books now numbering some nineteen titles, including books on Indy racing cars from the Speedway's first contest in 1911 through the 1970s, the Indy Novis, Chevrolet's Corvair and Corvette, the Mercedes-Benz 300SLs of 1952 and 1954–64, the Porsche Spyders and Porsche 917, the Ferrari Factory, Can-Am racing cars, the sports-racers of Briggs Cunningham and Jim Hall's Chaparral cars. More titles are in preparation.
On motor-industry topics Karl Ludvigsen has written books about high-performance engines, the Wankel rotary engine and the histories of American auto makers. He was editor of The Future of the Automobile, the report of the 1981–84 study of the world auto industry by MIT. This was named one of the best business books of the year by Business Week. In the 1980s, he established Euromotor Reports Limited, for which he wrote and edited numerous research studies.
Ludvigsen has collected his library of the same name throughout his career and it now holds extensive original negatives and transparencies from the 1950s forward with special strengths in motor sports, American cars and sports cars. [2] As well it holds original photos and glass negatives from the dawn of the automotive era.
In 1996, publishers in Britain and the United States launched Karl Ludvigsen's book on motor-industry management, Creating the Customer-Driven Car Company. It advises industry personnel on customer-pleasing best practice researched during 15 years of in charge of a London-based motor-industry management consultancy, which he founded in 1983. Ludvigsen and his team worked for most of the world's leading motor manufacturers in strategic planning, brand reinforcement, distribution, company structure and organization, mergers and acquisitions, and on design and engineering issues.
From 1980 through 1984, Ludvigsen was a member of the Policy Forum of the MIT Future of the Automobile Programme, the most comprehensive trilateral study of the motor industry ever undertaken. He also chaired the Auto & Transport Design Forum, an international conference on design and transport infrastructures held in Lugano, Switzerland and Stuttgart, Germany. His tutorial responsibilities have included the Syracuse University, The Royal College of Art and the Bavarian Academy of Advertising.
Ludvigsen has been a Member of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) since 1960 and has been active on both Standards and Activities Committees of the SAE. [2] He is currently a member of the Historical Committee. He is a founder member of the International Motor Press Association and a member of the Society of Automotive Historians, the Society of Authors, the Society for the History of Technology and the Guild of Motoring Writers. Ludvigsen is an honorary member of the Vintage Sports Car Club of America and the Corvair Society of America. [2] He is also a member of the council of the Historic Automobile Group.
Currently, he writes for Road & Track, Automobile Quarterly , The Automobile and Hemmings Sports & Exotic Cars, among others, plus various one-make periodicals and website publications Winding Road and Just-Auto.com. [7]
Ferrari S.p.A. is an Italian luxury sports car manufacturer based in Maranello, Italy. Founded in 1939 by Enzo Ferrari (1898–1988), the company adopted its current name in 1945 and began producing its line of cars in 1947. Ferrari became a public company in 1960, and from 1963 to 2014 it was a subsidiary of Fiat S.p.A. It was spun off from Fiat's successor entity, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, in 2016.
The Porsche 924 is a sports car produced by Porsche in Neckarsulm, Germany, from 1976 until 1988. A two-door, 2+2 coupé, the 924 replaced the 912E and 914 as the company's entry-level model.
Ferdinand Porsche was an Austro-Bohemian automotive engineer and founder of the Porsche AG. He is best known for creating the first gasoline–electric hybrid vehicle (Lohner–Porsche), the Volkswagen Beetle, the Auto Union racing cars, the Mercedes-Benz SS/SSK, and several other important developments and Porsche automobiles.
A V engine, sometimes called a Vee engine, is a common configuration for internal combustion engines. It consists of two cylinder banks—usually with the same number of cylinders in each bank—connected to a common crankshaft. These cylinder banks are arranged at an angle to each other, so that the banks form a "V" shape when viewed from the front of the engine.
The Porsche 959 is a sports car manufactured by German automobile manufacturer Porsche from 1986 to 1993, first as a Group B rally car and later as a road legal production car designed to satisfy FIA homologation regulations requiring at least 200 units be produced.
Carroll Hall Shelby was an American automotive designer, racing driver, and entrepreneur. Shelby is best known for his involvement with the AC Cobra and Mustang for Ford Motor Company, which he modified during the late 1960s and early 2000s. He established Shelby American in 1962 to manufacture and market performance vehicles. His autobiography, The Carroll Shelby Story, was published in 1967. As a race car driver, his highlight was as a co-driver of the winning 1959 24 Hours of Le Mans entry.
A grand tourer (GT) is a type of car that is designed for high speed and long-distance driving, due to a combination of performance and luxury attributes. The most common format is a front-engine, rear-wheel-drive two-door coupé with either a two-seat or a 2+2 arrangement. Grand tourers are most often the coupé derivative of luxury saloons or sedans.
A W18 engine is an eighteen-cylinder piston engine with three banks of six cylinders in a W configuration.
Car and Driver is an American automotive enthusiast magazine. In 2006 its total circulation was 1.23 million. It is owned by Hearst Magazines, who purchased it from its prior owner Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S. in 2011. It was founded as Sports Cars Illustrated. The magazine is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
The Chapman strut is a design of independent rear suspension used for light cars, particularly sports and racing cars. It takes its name from, and is best known for its use by, Colin Chapman of Lotus.
Ferrari is an Italian company which has produced sports cars since 1947, but traces its roots back to 1929 when Enzo Ferrari formed the Scuderia Ferrari racing team.
The World Sportscar Championship was the world series run for sports car racing by the FIA from 1953 to 1992.
The Lola T70 is a sports prototype developed by British manufacturer Lola Cars in 1965. Lola built the aluminium monocoque chassis, which were typically powered by large American V8s.
William Bushnell Stout was a pioneering American inventor, engineer, developer and designer whose works in the automotive and aviation fields were groundbreaking. Known by the nickname "Bill", Stout designed an aircraft that eventually became the Ford Trimotor and was an executive at the Ford Motor Company.
The 1968 24 Hours of Le Mans was the 36th Grand Prix of Endurance, and took place on 28 and 29 September 1968 on the Circuit de la Sarthe, in Le Mans, France.
The Lotus Mark VIII car was Colin Chapman’s first fully enclosed aerodynamic design. Chapman's basic requirements for the design were for a car of 1100 lbs powered by an 85 bhp engine and a maximum speed of 125 mph. Work began on this design in late 1953 and Chapman was assisted in the design of the body by the aerodynamicist Frank Costin, who was the brother of Mike Costin, his main collaborator.
The Auto Union Grand Prix racing cars types A to D were developed and built by a specialist racing department of Auto Union's Horch works in Zwickau, Germany, between 1933 and 1939, after the company bought a design by Dr. Ferdinand Porsche in 1933.
Michael May is a former racing driver and engineer from Switzerland. He participated in three Formula One World Championship Grands Prix, debuting on 14 May 1961. He scored no championship points.
{{cite encyclopedia}}: |website= ignored (help)| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| People | |
| Other | |
