MRO F1 Engineering Photobox photobooks have been disasterously affected by the Adobe/Flash issue in January 2021. This means, that although these can be bought on the strength of what’s written in my website or following other recommendation, they are no longer available to view before purchase, nor can I view them myself in order to edit any pre-January 2021 work-in-progress. With the intention to complete the latest unfinished photobook (Volume 3 Matra MS10/11), I had it printed off without being able to see it. I would then have to begin to laboriously re-type it and re-install photographs on Photobox’s new platform which would enable new projects to be viewed for editing and also before purchase. However, all previous projects would remain invisible (MRO F1 Engineering – The First Twenty Years, the 1975 Hesketh 308, the 1972 McLaren M19C and the 1974/6 McLaren M23’s).
Fortuitously, whilst working on a different project, I was contacted by a publisher who has been willing and able to save the cause! He has enthusiastically scanned in our first project, the 1975 Hesketh 308 in 1/12 scale, such that the text could be edited in Word and slightly updated with a totally new presentation of the photographs (freshly re-installed and optimised, from original images), also with a modern eye-catching page layout. This fantastic new edition is almost ready to go to press and very shortly I hope to be able to direct viewers to the website from where these can be purchased. An image of the front and rear boards and a selection of pages will be visible.
If this new edition of Volume 1 is a success, we can justify repeating the work to resurrect the other three existing Photobox photobooks, making them available to see and purchase once again. Additionally, the new publication’s price point will be notably more competitive than I was able to do before through Photobox. Once the process has been shown to work, I hope to do the same with the next volume re the 1968 Matra F1 cars and thereafter gradually expand the range as previously intended. Congratulations to my new publisher on producing such an attractive second edition of the 1975 Hesketh 308, this being a study of the car itself alongside the model I made of it. So, watch this space!