I like cars. I like to drive them (sometimes very fast around a track), look at them, watch TV shows about them (I’m The Stig!), and read about them. I don’t like to modify them or work on them or fix them, though, so Popular Mechanics isn’t really right for me (I used to have a subscription).
I think I might enjoy a different car magazine, but I haven’t spent much time with issues of either Road & Track or Car and Driver. Which one is better, and why?
And/or, is there another great car mag out there that I’m not aware of?
What kind of cars do you like? There are magazines and web sites for almost all types, models, performance levels, etc.
Classic cars, Muscle cars, Antique cars, there is a magazine or web site for all. Road & Track and Car & Driver are, in my opinion, essentially marketing tools rather than sources of the best information for your individual interests. However, they are good for a general interest car nut.
Hemmings offers several different magazines, depending upon what you like.
I can’t answer the question in the OP, since I don’t regularly read either of the two magazines, but I do get my reading material from car-related blogs. I specifically like “The Truth About Cars”, and Jack Baruth’s input, as he actually drives professionally and teaches at one of my local race tracks.
So, of those two marketing tools, which is the least annoying/provides the best info?
Blogs never even occurred to me! :smack: Ok, now I’m open to car-related-blog recommendations, too (and will check out “The Truth About Cars”). Thanks!
Agreed. Road and Track recently made the decision to deemphasize writing about cars and write more about car culture, things like “How to enjoy a summer drive in a convertible” or “Racing gloves of famous drivers”. I guess they figured that people who wanted to know about cars’ specifications would just look it up on the internet but they forgot about people like us who appreciate a well written road test or a review that discusses the technological features of a new engine. Plus they’re down to 10 issues a year which is rarely a good sign.
It might be a bit too gearhead for you, but Grassroots Motorsports is pretty good for the track day sort of crowd. Car & Driver/Road & Track are pretty decent if you are into reading about new cars. Automobile is similar, but I actually like it better…I need to renew my subscription.
I’d hit up a Barnes & Noble or similar bookstore with a wide selection of car mags and flip through some and see what appeals to you. Subscription prices are REALLY cheap these days…you can get 12 issues for $8 when they have specials, and those rags cost $6 an issue at the newsstand (granted, the newsstand issues use better paper stock, etc…but subscriptions are CHEAP now.
Along with The Truth About Cars, you might enjoy Jalopnik.
I subscribed to C&D for a lot of years, and the writing was, in part, why…smart guys, often a little subversive, and danged funny. Their longer-form articles (frequently about racing and race drivers) were well-done.
I only read C&D occasionally now – while I don’t know that I’d say it “sucks” now, it is true that a number of those writers from the 1990s and 2000s aren’t with the magazine anymore, and it’s not quite the same.
I loved CandD in its heyday and tolerated dusty old R&T, but CandD is still stuck in the “automotive outlaws” mode, whining about speed limits and radar as if it mattered like it did in 1976. R&T finally lost me after they wrote a long “culture” article about how wonderful it is to drive around Tibet… without one mention of the oppression or political issues. It read to me like a piece about touring Germany in 1938 (gushing about the well-scrubbed children, pretty roads and well-organized towns) that failed to mention anything about the Nazi Party.
I have pretty much given up on automotive journalism. Even Badass DED’s creation, Automobile, fell into a sludgy middle with the other two and weak-sister Motor Trend.
Maybe it’s that in the 1970s, there was a lot to fight for - CandD had to scrape the barrel to find five cars that could “double the double-nickel” and hit 110 on a track. Now the least econobox on Nissan’s back lot can outperform anything from that era… ALL cars are pretty damned good and many are all-time champs (and a few are impossibly unbelievable; see: Veyron). So there’s just not as much to do any more except compare one pretty damned good Ford to another awfully damned good Toyota… lather, rinse, repeat. Boring.
I’d rather just take my '66 Cobra out for a drive and remember how it used to be.
Yes. Check out the British car magazine Evo. Like most UK mags it’s got an anti-American bias, and at ~$10/issue it’s a bit pricey (the iPad version is half that, iirc), but it’s pretty much the best written car magazine on the planet. They tend to focus more on high performance cars, so if you’re interested in more common cars, their rival Car is almost as good (similar price structure).
If you insist on buying American, Automobile is the best US magazine.
Hmm, sounds like neither R&T nor C&D is what it used to be, or necessarily worth the price of a subscription.
I already knew about Jalopnik; I read it every now and then. But yeah, the Gawker thing. It’s good for pictures of new cars, and sometimes a painful picture of a McLaren or something wrapped around a tree, but I tend to think of it as light entertainment that just happens to be car-related.
I don’t “insist” on buying American, but my concern about a British mag would be the same as what sometimes frustrates me about Top Gear (I only ever watch the UK show): cars that will never be sold over here.
Unlikely you need another opinion but put me down for C&D and The Truth About Cars.
Seems my interests run along similar lines. I like cars. I like driving them. I like reading about them. I try not to miss TopGear.
When it comes to my own cars, I don’t like modifying them to any great extent from stock. I don’t have a garage full of tools so I don’t work on them myself either. If I won the lottery, without a doubt my hobby would be to collect and restore beautiful cars of various types.
I still find those cars interesting, and they sometimes do make their way here in one form or another. The UK mags talked about the Mini, Smart, and Fiat years before they got here, for instance. The new Dodge Dart is based on an Alfa Romeo. The European Focus tends to be a couple years newer than we get, and so on.
Yeah, I would say it began to go downhill around the redesign c. 2006/7 and certainly by the time Csaba Csere resigned as editor-in-chief late in 2008.
Is that when Pat “Whiner In Chief” Bedard took over? As many good things as he’s written over the years, that guy is almost completely responsible for the magazine’s sort of sulking-teenager attitude about speed limits, road laws and other oppression that shouldn’t apply to his (us’ns) superior kind.
