Hello. I want to teach my son how to identify the year of a vehicle by different features. He's actually asked me to teach him this. Does anyone know of a book or somewhere online that will show the different features or differences between different model years. I.E. the 2006 V6 will have (or optional) fog lights, where as the 05 V6's do not. Of course I want to stretch back to the 60's and want to teach him about more than just Mustangs. I'm not sure if there is one website or book that teaches all this. I know the timeline here shows the differences between each Mustang year-which is awesome. I'm looking for more sources for other types of cars.

Thank you for any input!

David

 

There are 2 books that I have and they've tought me everything I know about how to recognize cars. You can buy both of them on Amazon.com. Two books that I have are Standard catalog of American cars 1946-1975 and Standard catalog of American cars 1976-1999. They have a lot of pictures and details (info, prices, engines ...) of every American car made in that period.

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Now if you wanna go even more advanced, there is book called Standard Catalog of American cars 1805-1942. I don't have that one because I wasn't that much interested in cars that old, I like cars made after World War II.

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There is also one more book if your son is interested in history of imported cars. Its called Standard Catalog of Imported cars 1946-2002. I just got it recently and its pretty good. Not as good as Standard Caralog of American cars, but not bad either.

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I hope this helps.

 

That's a good question. A couple of years ago I picked up a very very thick book entitled "100 years of the great American automobile" The vehicles went all the way back to 1876ish, so I guess it would be more like 100+ years of the great american automobile.

Matt

 

I love this forum! I appreciate the info. That's exactly what I was looking for!
Thanks!
David

 

If you dont want to spend money just look through and read some of the time line. I know that everything is not there but it is a good starting point.

 

No prob David.
If you want more books just search Amazon.com, they have a lot of books about cars. That's what I did and now I have at least 10 books about cars (I'm not sure about exact number). I just got 3 books yesterday from Amazon.com: Automotive Atrocities the cars we love to have (Mustang II is in there, as one of fake muscle cars), The end of Detroit how big 3 lost their grip on the american car market (awesome book) and Junkyard Jewels Diamonds in the rust.

 

All of the books Zoran has listed are great books and very detailed! I can also vouch that these books are top quality

The best Mustang book by far is the Standard Catalog of Mustangs by Brad Bowling. It is very detailed and contains very few if any errors unlike some other Mustang books.

Standard Catalog of Mustangs

Have fun teaching your son. I'm in the process of teaching my wife. She can now tell the difference between almost any SN95 Mustang on the road. Now for the Fox chassis's (I'm working backwards)

 

there are plenty of books out there that specilize in a certain brand, just look around

 

I found it easier to recognize different year model cars by going on to a car search trader site like Collector Car Trader Online and just search for any type of car you're interested in year-by-year and after looking at all the photos of all the cars for sale you will begin to recognize the unique features of each year.

 

Thanks for that. I went to Amazon.com so many times and I never noticed that book. I bough it today.