Assouline's 'Vintage Cars' Book Treats Classic Automobiles With the Same Reverence as Fine Art

Summary

• Assouline is releasing Vintage Cars in June 2026, a 208-page large-format hardcover priced at $120 USD
• The book features photography by Laziz Hamani and an introduction by renowned automotive historian Ken Gross, spanning iconic marques and rare collector models admired for their rarity, technical excellence, and timeless design
• Vintage Cars is part of Assouline’s Classics Collection, continuing the publisher’s approach of treating cultural subjects with the material and editorial seriousness of luxury objects

Ken Gross has spent a career arguing that vintage cars deserve to be understood the way we understand fine furniture or oil paintings: as objects shaped by human intention, technical mastery, and a specific cultural moment. Assouline‘s Vintage Cars, arriving June 2026 at $120 USD, makes that argument in the most direct way possible: 208 large-format pages of Laziz Hamani’s photography, each image revealing the sculptural lines and luminous finishes of machines that have outlasted the eras that produced them.

The pairing of Gross and Hamani is the central creative decision the book makes, and it is the right one. Gross is one of the most respected voices in automotive history, a writer and curator whose work has consistently treated the subject with the intellectual seriousness it rarely receives in mainstream culture. His introduction frames the book’s argument before a single photograph is encountered: vintage cars are survivors, he writes, objects from a kinder, simpler, less litigious time that evoke an emotional response from nearly everyone who sees them. That framing positions Vintage Cars not as a reference book for collectors but as an emotional document for anyone who has ever stopped in the street to look at an old car and felt something they couldn’t immediately name.

Hamani’s photography answers that framing with images that treat their subjects as luxury objects rather than machines. Known for his work across fashion and fine goods, Hamani brings a visual sensibility to the cars that foregrounds surface quality, proportion, and light in a way that automotive photography rarely does. The sculptural lines of a hood, the luminous finish of a fender, the precise detailing of a dashboard instrument cluster: each image rewards the kind of close attention usually reserved for studio portraits of watches or jewellery. At 11 x 13.5 inches, the book’s large-format dimensions give Hamani’s photographs the physical presence they require to make that quality legible.

The selection of subjects spans iconic marques and rare collector models, united by the qualities Gross identifies as the hallmarks of true vintage significance: rarity, technical excellence, timeless design, great provenance, and detailed history. Vintage automobiles occupy a peculiar position in the broader conversation about craft and luxury. Unlike watches or leather goods, which are produced in controlled conditions by specialists, the great cars of the early and mid-twentieth century were the product of manufacturers who viewed their creations as personalized works of art. The famous Rolls-Royce “Flying Lady” hood ornament, the subject of one of the press-approved images in this collection, exemplifies that attitude: it is a functional object that was also conceived as a symbol of speed, grace, and luxury simultaneously.

Assouline’s Classics Collection provides the right publishing context for this material. Founded in Paris in 1994 by Prosper and Martine Assouline, the house has built its reputation on applying luxury publishing standards to cultural subjects that deserve more than conventional treatment. Over 2,000 titles into that project, the Classics Collection sits at the intersection of heritage, craft, and visual culture. Vintage Cars joins a lineage of books that understand the physical object of the publication as an extension of its subject matter. A book about objects made with immense pride and viewed as works of art should itself be made with immense pride and viewed as a work of art. Assouline delivers on that logic.

Vintage Cars is available in June 2026 via the Assouline webstore.