(Stroking long, white beard) Remember magazines? In the pre-internet era, when ink on paper ruled, magazines were essentially your only entrée to the gated worlds of everything from fancying cats, to semi-pro sewing, from building model airplanes to fishing competitively. And of course, the full scope of cardom beyond whatever was rolling around your hometown was available at your favorite newsstand, if not arriving directly in your mailbox once a month.
As I’m sure was also true for many of you, Car and Driver and Road & Track were staples in the Vieira household. Those subscriptions were re-upped faithfully, and Motor Trend was added to the mix whenever a good subscription deal presented itself, or whenever individual issues caught Dad’s eye. As a model builder, I picked up Scale Modeler and Auto Modeler on the regular, and as soon as a 1974 Super Beetle became my daily transpo to school, Hot VW was frequently read over a bowl of cereal before heading to Seekonk High School.
As the internet grew and magazine sales slumped, I held onto good ol’ ink and paper longer than most, probably because I was in the magazine-making business by then as a staffer at RC Car Action – and also because in those pre-smartphone days, lugging a laptop into the bathroom was a real hassle.
Today, The Autopian is in my pocket wherever I go, as well as all those print titles that transitioned from paper to pixels. We get our car news, entertainment, and info as quickly as it can be reported, and there’s way more of it, as there’s no limit to virtual pages. I’m glad I got to experience both worlds, the disconnected one we all knew before 1996 or so, and the modern realm of unlimited information and instant access, for better or worse. But I do miss the thrill of finding a fresh glossy magazine curled in the mailbox.
Your turn: What Were / Are Your Favorite Car Magazines?Â
Car and Driver, above all
AutoWeek
Hemmings Motor News
Automotive News
Amazingly, three of the four are still in print, and still arrive in my mailbox.
Back in the day I subscribed to Car Craft, Hot Rod, and sometimes 4 Wheel and Offroad
I still have a few laying around in one of my tool box drawers
Car Craft by a mile.
Grassroots Motorsports is the only physical subscription I have left.
Dsport kept me sane while I was in Afghanistan, really liked them once they transitioned to more technical stuff rather than lyfestyle (barf).
Turbo
Top Gear
Grassroots Motorsports/Classic Motorsports
Racecar Engineering
Evo. I loved their stories about the cars. Figures don’t matter, feelings matter. And what a great reminder to check them out again.
Oh and Grassroots Motorsports!
Road & Track, Car and Driver, and AutoWeek back in the 80s. Automobile for a while. Oh, and RC Car Action.
Hagerty Driver’s Club is pretty damn good these days.
Yugo Restorers Monthly.
Focus Fanatic. It was kind of irrelevant because this was the early 2000’s and I already knew about everything in it by reading the forum of the same name, but there is something more satisfying about reading physical media,
Practical Classics
Hot VWs
Car & Driver
The Gentlemen’s Petroleum Inhalation Quarterly
Hagerty Driver’s Club
Early-mid 80s. Already mentioned the other day how Hot Rod provided me a rotating display of wall art, also helped me appreciate lead sleds and T-buckets and other things I might not have gotten into otherwise. Also loved to draw cars so CarToons was the other major player, still have a couple my old issues.
Car and Driver, continuously since May 1983. The third issue I got was the infamous Baja sports sedan comparo; quite the read for a 15 year old.
I have that bookmarked and go back and read it once every 2-3 months. The 50th Anniversary book on C&D also has a re-print of a follow-on article with more detailed information. I highly recommend that one too if you can find it.
Automobile– especially ANY Automobile issue that didn’t’ have a Jamie “Whiny” Kitman article in it.
Australian Wheels, Modern Motor and Street Machine
Sport Compact Car. Under Dave Colman, the inventor of the “Dave point” regarding front suspension , his stories and project cars where amazing.
Good call out. SCC was the magazine that never lapsed for me in the late 90s and early 2000s.
Living in LA, my car guy circle includes Dave on the periphery. The few times I’ve spoken to him, he (and his wife) are genuinely nice folks. He’s also one of the reasons current Mazda cars handle as well as they do!
C&D during the golden years, no question about it. What other magazine would have tested the effect of pot on driving by taking someone who had never smoked it and had no intention of ever doing so, getting him to take a bunch of puffs and then drive around on a closed circuit? (And this was back when the stuff was clearly and completely illegal.) Great writing from people like Davis, Yates, Bedard, Sherman, and an ethos that was just a can of ether and a handful of Qaaludes from Hunter Thompson. For more staid but still very good writing, there was Automobile under Davis. R&T was fine for getting solid info on every car made. Motor Trend was dead to me after the Vega was named Car of the Year.
R&T and C&D were always subscribed when I was a kid. But C&D always seemed to have the cooler, “better-read” feel. Well, other than The Bishops’ Father carefully drafting a pointed, sarcastic letter to C&D to counter something offensively history-unaware written by Brock Yates. He was pretty proud when it got published, as C&D letters had a pretty high bar in the 1980s.
Car and Driver, AutoWeek, Motor Trend, Cycle World, Cycle Guide. Any other related magazine that caught my eye at the stores. My last subscription was to Automobile just to follow David E. Davis Jr.
Automobile hung on a long, long time.
I always like Robert Cumberford (sp??) design critiques.
Fun, enlightening stuff
Always have and always will have a voracious appetite for Road & Track and Car & Driver. A local thrift store near me had every. single. issue. of R&T from like 1969-82, so obviously I bought them all. The writing is obviously excellent, but just as entertaining are the ads. It’s so funny to see actually good malaise-era cars (Saab 99 Turbo) being advertised next to a Citation knowing what we know now in retrospect.
R&T and C&D were in my mailbox each month. I always loved the R&T review cutaways.
Sounds like my dad’s R&T collection. We donated them when he passed away. I like to think they went to someone that would love them.
Top Gear Magazine was always one of my favorites.
No ads, always good articles, amazing pictures, quality paper, and a huge collection of car specs in the back pages.