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Received the Noonan Bathurst book and thought I'd post a comparison with the Clarke (V8Xtra) book.Two race annuals that are radically different in nearly every way.
Price-about $75 each
Printing Details-Noonan book is soft cover with non gloss paper and 190 pages.Clarke book is hard cover with gloss paper and 168 pages.
Text details-Noonan book has equivalent of one page of writing covering practice,qualifying and shootout.Clarke book has 10 pages of writing for this.As for race Clarke book has about 8 pages of text.For Noonan book this is where it gets unique/strange.There is no race description.Instead each car has its own 4 page "chapter" with about two thirds of a page of text (about half of which is driver quotes) and the rest is photos of that car.
Statistics-Race statistics pretty similar except Noonan book has a lap chart.Noonan book also includes a chassis history of each car and about 12 pages of race history stats.
My conclusions.Knowing the previous publications both have done I would have backed the Noonan book to be the best.However soft cover and non glossy paper are big drawbacks and would reflect the higher cost of printing in Australia.Previous motor racing yearbooks that have tried non gloss paper (Great Race 1989 and Autocourse/Motocourse 2004) have faced consumer backlash and reverted to gloss after 1 year.The only Yearbook I get that has maintained non gloss paper is the one for the Nurburgring 24 Hour however the paper quality is much higher for the German book.As for the text for all pre race stuff 1 page is as pathetic as it sounds..As for the race I would assume that people wanting a yearbook of the race would want a race description in there somewhere.Whether that is in a straight text format like The Great Race,a detailed photograph caption format like the Le Mans Annual or mainly photographic with a written summary like Nurburgring(although the written part is a lot more detailed if you can read German for that one).I think there is a reason why no other annual has ever used the Noonan format and that is because it is terrible.
At the most I would think only one of these can survive.I hope it is the Clarke book as I wouldn't buy the Noonan one again even if it was the only one on the market.Hate to be so critical but it reflects my disappointment.
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