There is something about an old car that stops you in the street. Not the noise or the speed, but the shape of the thing. The way light falls across a curve designed seventy years ago by someone who thought of themselves as an artist as much as an engineer. Assouline's forthcoming Vintage Cars, arriving June 2026, understands this entirely.
The 208-page large-format hardcover, priced at $120 USD, is a collaboration between photographer Laziz Hamani and automotive historian Ken Gross. It is the pairing that makes the book work. Gross has spent decades arguing that vintage automobiles deserve the same critical attention we give to fine furniture or oil paintings, and his introduction frames the book not as a collector's reference but as an emotional document for anyone who has ever looked at an old car and felt something they could not quite 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. A sculptural hood line, 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 by 13.5 inches, the format gives these photographs the physical presence they demand.
The selection 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. The famous Rolls-Royce Flying Lady hood ornament features prominently, a functional object conceived simultaneously as a symbol of speed, grace, and luxury. It is the sort of detail that rewards the kind of viewing this book invites: slow, deliberate, attentive.
Vintage Cars joins Assouline's Classics Collection, a series that has built its reputation on applying luxury publishing standards to cultural subjects that deserve more than conventional treatment. Founded in Paris in 1994 by Prosper and Martine Assouline, the house has produced over 2,000 titles across art, design, travel, and fashion. The logic behind this one is characteristically Assouline: a book about objects made with immense pride, viewed as works of art, should itself be made with immense pride and viewed as a work of art. It is a straightforward proposition, executed with the kind of material seriousness that makes their books objects of desire in their own right.
Vintage Cars is available June 2026 via the Assouline webstore.
