Burt S Levy Books in Order

If you want the natural starting point: The Last Open Road → Montezuma's Ferrari
If you want the full Buddy Palumbo run: The Last Open Road → Montezuma's Ferrari → The Fabulous Trashwagon → Toly's Ghost
If you want the Le Mans, big-money side of the story: The 200mph Steamroller: Red Reign → The Italian Job → Out of the Mist
If you want shorter, side-road reading: A Potside Companion

Burt S. Levy was born in Chicago, and the city stayed in his bones even as racing pulled him all over the map. One of his earliest big memories came as a 14-year-old at Meadowdale International Raceway outside Chicago, watching sports cars flash past and realizing this was not going to be a casual interest. Cars, speed, and the people around them got hold of him early.

They never really let go.

Levy came to writing the long way around. He worked as a car and motorcycle mechanic, ran a sports car shop called Mellow Motors on Chicago's North Side with his wife Carol, sold high-end cars downtown, taught performance driving, and even spent a few days as a stunt driver when The Blues Brothers was filming in Chicago. He also raced seriously, winning nearly 100 races and eight season championships, while learning the hard truth that loving racing and making a living from it are not always the same thing.

Writing started as a practical solution. Levy has said he began doing magazine pieces as a way to get his hobby for free, trading words for access, trips, and the chance to drive cars he could never have bought. But journalism was only part of it. He disliked most racing fiction because it missed the long nights in the garage, the towing, the bench racing, the rivalries, and the friendships. So he decided to try writing the kind of racing novel he wanted to read.

That book became The Last Open Road. Levy worked on it for eight years, and one of his smartest choices was making the narrator a mechanic instead of a driver. Buddy Palumbo, a young gas station mechanic from Passaic, New Jersey, could see the whole world around him, from the working-class shop floor to the flashy top end of 1950s sports car racing. When publishers passed, Levy and Carol took out a second mortgage, published the novel themselves in 1994, and sold copies out of the trunk of their car at race weekends.

It was a very Burt Levy way to launch a writing career.

Readers kept showing up. The Last Open Road grew into a larger saga with Montezuma's Ferrari, The Fabulous Trashwagon, and Toly's Ghost, books that mix coming of age, romance, class friction, and very real motorsport history. Later, The 200mph Steamroller: Red Reign, The Italian Job, and Out of the Mist widened the lens to the Le Mans world and the corporate muscle behind it. Even A Potside Companion, a collection of shorter pieces, has the same voice readers like in the novels: funny, observant, slightly unruly, and deeply fond of mechanics, racers, hustlers, and dreamers.

His career as a writer kept growing alongside his life in the sport. He wrote columns and features that won journalism awards, and in 2019 the audio version of The Last Open Road, which he reworked as a 1950s radio play, won a major motorsports book award. By 2025, the novel had sold more than 50,000 copies and reached its 12th hardcover printing. Levy was also still married to Carol more than five decades after they married, still telling stories, and still showing up where racers gather. That feels fitting. His books were built by someone who knew the smell of hot brakes, dirty hands, long odds, and one more crazy idea that just might work.