Preorder NOW: Our Radical New Book is Here
Preorders are live for 'We Deserve This,' a genre-bending book of joy and audacity.
Happy Race Day! especially to our friend Alice, who tumbled down the side of a mountain for several hundred feet while driving on a canyon run. Alice is okay thanks to her car, area rescue workers, and some luck. Thank goodness.
You may remember Alice from our interview back in March 2023. There she described her driving goals like this:
Form and function — my vision for my car is to look bright and fun and colorful but she still has to perform. She's not fast but she's quick and that's what I love about this platform. One of my favorite car quotes is from the drift king Keiichi Tsuchiya — "Speed isn't everything, You gotta look cool on the touge too."
Today, she’s continuing that vision by moving on from her first car with another, sweet-looking FR-S. Check it out here. Happy (and safe) driving, Alice.
In today’s email:
Our latest book launch!
New author announcements
The return of Drive to Survive
👇 And now: here’s my main article for the week:
A Staggering Car Culture Book of Trans Joy
I CREATED CARRARA MEDIA to prove that there were unheard automotive stories out there that deserved to be told. To prove that there were talented creators who were being told “No,” and to prove that they had earned a shot.
This week, I’ve been proven right.
The newest release from Carrara Media is We Deserve This, a coffee table book of photography that pushes boundaries, breaks barriers and destroys the status quo. In short, it flips the traditional image of car culture on its head.
We Deserve This features more than 20 transgender auto enthusiasts, modeling their personal styles and identities alongside some of the coolest cars imaginable. In the majority of cases, they are the models’ personal cars.
This is a book to courageously celebrate something that many would rather keep in the shadows. The trans community is under constant attack in this country, simply for existing. A project like We Deserve This seeks to honor and provide space for those kept in constraint, and allow them to be themselves — unapologetically.
The author, photographer and creative force behind We Deserve This is Victoria Scott. You will likely remember Scott from our previous collaboration, a photographic work of fiction called Postcards From the End of the World. We also highlighted her online zine, The Last Great American Road Trip, in a Q&A last year.
Scott is transgender herself. For her, and others like her, our friends and siblings and neighbors, this is more than a work of passion and creativity. It is a work of existing. It is a work of living and surviving and enduring, joyfully.
Cars bring us together. Over more than 20 shoots, conducted in four states over the course of two years, Scott created an environment for her subjects to be themselves. And she taught me about a corner of car culture of which I knew next to nothing.
For that, I’m forever grateful to her. I started this company so that people could hear “Yes” to their ideas. I believed in their talent, and I believed we would find a market. Scott has proven me right, and done so much more in the process.
We Deserve This is a book about car enthusiasts. It’s about people being themselves, and it’s about Americans. After opening preorders two days ago this is already our biggest book launch by far, so please issue congrats to Victoria for her efforts.
She deserves it.
More Announcements
If you read our press release for We Deserve This in full, you may have noticed an interesting little tidbit toward the bottom.
That’s right — we have two new authors joining the Carrara Media roster this year.
First is Kevin McCauley, a renowned automotive photographer who is preparing his debut coffee table book as we speak. Follow his Substack for photo tips:
Second is Sam Mitani, a longtime automotive journalist and road test editor for Road & Track. In recent years, Mitani has made a name for himself as a fiction writer and his upcoming title will publish through Carrara Media later this year.
I could not be more thrilled to welcome Kevin and Sam to the team. Please stay tuned for much more on both of these releases as they get closer, and check out the full roster of Carrara authors right here.
And Finally…
While I’m working to ensure We Deserve This gets a proper launch, check out these links for cool stories I’m following this week:
Long Beach Grand Prix season is getting close! In this video, a pro drifter explains the unique challenge of the course.
The studio Artisan Design House is drawing tons of attention for its Nissan GT-R rendering. Over and over again, their posts are 🔥🔥🔥.
It’s almost time for a new Formula One season and you know what that means — a new season of Grand Prix Gastronomy! Get your recipe books ready.
Speaking of F1, the new season is Netflix’s smash hit Drive to Survive is out. Here’s a review from Jalopnik (I haven’t watched yet so I havent’t read it yet, either).
Here’s the trailer for Hemmings’ YouTube series on building a Grand National for the rapper Killer Miker to drive to the Grammys. (Spoiler alert: He won Rap Album of the Year.) (Spoiler alert: The car is dope.)
Thanks for reading. Please consider sharing our newsletter with your friends.
Drive hard and be safe. Black Lives Matter.
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