Autoblog Gift Guide: Cars on the small screen

For the time you or your car-loving gift recipient don't actually spend in the car, there are plenty of quality programs and movies available on DVD to occupy the time. Today's gift guide shows you our documentary, "how to" and movie picks to tide over the car lover in your life.

Documentaries:
Alan Alda in Scientific American Frontiers XIV: Future Car
Alan Alda visits the research labs and test tracks of the Big Three auto makers to find out what people will be driving in the future. The search for a fast, safe, exciting and non-polluting fuel-cell car takes Alda from Germany to California to Iceland, which is attempting to become the first nation to entirely replace imported petroleum with domestically produced hydrogen.

The World?s Greatest F1 Cars
An impressive visual encyclopedia, The World?s Greatest F1 Cars covers the first 50 years of Formula One racing. Grand Prix aficionados will be thrilled with the detailed footage and narration on 103 cars.

The Car the Art
To the true enthusiast, cars are not just transportation ? they are works of art. They are rolling pieces of sculpture whose beauty rivals any other form of art. This program visits The Car the Art exhibition in Los Angeles, a show featuring over 600 fine works of automotive-influenced art and sculpture, as well as many of the fine vintage automobiles upon which the art is based.

?How To?:

The Collector Car - Restoration Home Video Library
High quality, ?How To? restoration videos show step by step how antique and collector car owners can restore their vehicles, be tey a vintage hot rod, historic, classic car, street rod or truck.

Movies:

Days of Thunder
Cole Trickle enters the high-pressure world of Nascar racing. He?s a hot driver with a hot temper, and this attitude gets him into trouble not only with other drivers, but members of his own team as well.

Grand Prix
American Grand Prix driver Pete Aron is fired by his Jordan-BRM racing team after a crash at Monaco that injures his British teammate, Scott Stoddard. While Stoddard struggles to recover, Aron begins to drive for the Japanese Yamura team, and becomes romantically involved with Stoddard?s estranged wife.

Le Mans
Almost in breadth and depth of a documentary, this movie depicts an auto race during the 70s on the world?s hardest endurance course: Le Mans in France. In the focus is the duel between the German Stahler in Ferrari 512LM and the American Delaney in Gulf Team Porsche 917.

The Fast and the Furious
The Fast & The Furious is loosely based on an article in a magazine about street clubs that race Japanese cars late at night. The film stars Vin Diesel as Domenic Toretto, the leader of a street gang that is under suspicion of stealing expensive electronic equipment. Paul Walker plays an undercover police officer that attempts to find out who exactly is stealing the equipment. Followed up by 2 Fast 2 Furious, which we can?t in good conscience recommend you actually pay for.

Goldfinger
The Bank of England has discovered that someone is stockpiling vast quantities of gold and suspects international bullion dealer Auric Goldfinger of being involved. The Bank requests that British agent James Bond be sent to investigate. Bond soon uncovers an audacious plan to commit ?the crime of the century? and bring economic chaos to the West.

Thanks to new Autoblogger Joel for helping me compile today?s Gift Guide.