’Tis the season and time to find that special something for the gearhead in your family. What to buy? And where to go to buy it?

Autozone is highlighting GPS navigational units, bug deflectors and ceramic brakes on its Web site autozone.com. Certainly, navigational devices are a great gift, although priced well north of $100.

Subscriptions to car magazines such as Automobile, Car and Driver and Motor Trend make great gifts. I especially like Car and Driver’s desk calendar. A list of the top 10 auto magazines is available at allyoucanread.com.

Books are always a favorite and the holiday season always sees a number of coffee table monsters dedicated to a certain marque or historical period or style of car.

Here are a few that caught the eye of Journal Auto Photographer Steve Sydlowski and myself:

Cobra: The first 40 Years by Trevor Legate (Motorbooks, $50) is a history of the sports car that racing legend Carroll Shelby brought to the forefront of racing in the early 1960s. The early history of AC Cars in England is sometimes only mentioned in books on the Cobra, but here AC is intertwined with Shelby through the years. Illustrated with over 300 photographs, the book is a must for Cobra sports car lovers.

Chapman’s Car Compendium: The Essential Book on Car Facts and Trivi by Giles Chapman (Merrell, $16.95) is full of the kind of British-accented automobile trivia that you might be asked on a game show. What’s the horsepower of the 10 most powerful production cars? The best way to stay awake at the wheel? Or how are the Porsches and Piechs families related? A book with hundreds of fun facts that a true petrolhead would have in his collection.

MINI: 50 Years by Rob Golding (Motorbooks, $24.95) is a fascinating and highly informative history of the iconic car, from its inception as a sketch by Alec Issigonis and its introduction in 1959 to its reincarnation as BMW’s MINI in 2001.

What Golding does not know about the Mini/MINI is probably not worth knowing; his book is a fascinating account of how the little car was developed and how it almost failed until being picked up by the smart set in London in the swinging 1960s.

Another book just out is Crash by John Gunnell (Krause Publications, $12.99), although I’m not sure how Christmassy this is — photographs of car crashes from 1940s through the 1960s.

As the blurb on the back states, “With this book its okay to stop and stare.”

For more books, check out motorbooks.com, which lists books under a large number of categories, including new releases, racing, motorcycles, hot rods and customs, repair manuals, Corvette, Ferrari in addition to cooking and crafts and hobbies. Go figure.

Christmasgifts.com offers an Auto Accessories category that lists 13 Web Sites offering everything from auto parts to apparel to stickers to auto loans.

Speedgear.com offers calendars and apparel in addition to die-cast cars in 1/18 scale, but they are pricey (mostly well over $100) compared with the excellent range of models by such makers as Maisto (usually around $20) in many hobby and toy stores.

Restoration Hardware has signed a deal with Cobra designer Carroll Shelby and is selling a number of Shelby related items. They include a limited range of detailed 1/24 toy Shelby cars as well as a 64-foot “Shelby Slot Car Race Track” for two smaller Daytona Coupes from the 1964 Le Mans. The set costs about $200.

Then there are the Shelby driving gloves for about $50. Check out the Shelby Car Collection at restorationhardware.com.

Speaking of slot cars, I wrote recently about Scalextric 1/32 scale slot cars which are available locally at the Apponaug Color & Hobby Shop on Greenwich Avenue in Warwick.

The British manufacturer celebrated its 100th anniversary last year and sells a number of tracks sets ranging from Formula 1 to NASCAR to a James Bond set with an Aston Martin DBS and chase car. Set prices are around $200 while individual cars, which are highly detailed, cost about $50.

Then there are the video games where players are ‘sitting’ in the cars. There’s 40 of them listed at amazon.com’s The Best Car Racing Games for All Consoles page, including “Dirt” and “Grid,” both by Codemasters, Forza Motorsport 2 by Microsoft and Gran Turismo 4 by Sony. Grand Theft Auto IV by Rockstar North is conspicuous by its absence.

Or how about a gift certificate to a tire store? Or a complete cleaning kit with sponges, buckets, soaps and waxes?

Better still, a set of rims for the tuner in your family. There are all sorts of options and and an increasing number of shops and Web sites cater to this growing hobby.

And check out cartatts.com for adhesive decals you can dress your car up with, including flames, flowers etc. Fans can even upload their own images or designs for the personal or promotional touch.

Indeed, some marques have their own tuner stores.

Check out vwtuningmag.com for all sorts of cool accessories to dress up your Volkswagen.

For those in the restoration hobby, any key piece of equipment makes a great gift and may well jump start that project that has been sitting in the garage for too long.

And for the racing fan, how about tickets to events at Lime Rock Park in Lakeville, Conn., the New England Dragway in Epping, N.H., the New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon, N.H. or closer to home, the Seekonk Speedway in Seekonk and the Thompson Speedway, in Thompson, Conn.

Then there is the ultimate gift of a new car, all wrapped up in a big red bow. There are a lot of salesmen out there only too willing to overlook how naughty you have been and cut you a deal on a new set of wheels.

With additional reporting by Journal Staff Steve Szydlowski.

pelsworth@projo.com