HOT CORNER

What: “Barney Oldfield, the Life and Times of America’s Legendary Speed King.”

Author: William F. Nolan.

Publisher: Brown Fox Books, Carpinteria, Calif.

Price: $32.50.

It has been 100 years since Barney Oldfield tooled his Winton 2 around Agricultural (now Exposition) Park in downtown Los Angeles at breakneck speeds of more than a mile a minute, but the lovable old barnstorming daredevil, his cigar clenched between his teeth, remains a cultural icon of the past.

So much so that Nolan, who first had his Oldfield biography published in 1961 by G.P. Putnam’s Sons, has revised and re-illustrated a new edition with Brown Fox Books. This 232-page book, including 40 pages of period photos, is a wonderful picture of America’s turn-of-the-century passion for speed. Much of Oldfield’s racing was in Southern California, at Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, El Centro, Bakersfield, San Diego, Playa del Rey, Corona and old Ascot Park, where he once raced an airplane -- and won when the plane crashed.

There is a chapter on the Corona road race in 1913 where he swerved his mammoth Mercer to miss a small boy who had run out onto Grand Boulevard, an incident that possibly cost Oldfield a win over his bitter rival, Earl Cooper.

Most entertaining is Nolan’s use of colorful quotations from news stories. For instance, for a record run in Bakersfield, a writer described his machine as “reeling like a drunken sot, with its naked exhaust emitting clouds of fire ... while frantically excited women waved hankies and parasols.”

Also revealing is that in the 1930s, Oldfield shocked his old racing pals when he allowed the Los Angeles Examiner to use his name in its battle to close Ascot Park because of its fatalities. He was quoted: “Automobile racing has outlived its usefulness. It has ceased to be a sport and has become a morbid and brutal spectacle.” Later, he said he regretted the statement, that he said it in a moment of bitterness, but a lot of his friends never forgave him.

-- Shav Glick