Car Mags You Actually Miss Reading.

[Warren t claim]

As a nine year old back in 1979, I always used to blow my pocket money on Hot Car. At the time it was a custom car monthly edited by Keith Sueme. In about 1982 it morphed into the much missed Performance Car.

In late 1980 I started buying Popular Motoring, a sort of Car Mechanics type mag with interesting features as well as DIY stuff. Sadly it was taken over in 1982 by Practical Motoring losing the main staffers of John Pearson ( who edited Practical Classics back in its best era), Terry Gray and Martyn Williams.

Moving swiftly on to 1989, I started reading Buying Cars, a title later changed to Car Choice. This was the mag that first gave the former star of Top Gear and Coalville Magistrates Court Quentin Willson his first break into journalism.

A couple of winters later I started buying Your Classic, a decent enough mag less snooty than C&SC. Edited by Rover P6 licker Chris Horton, I found it to be a decent and enjoyable read. Sadly it folded in about '94.

Obviously, Jalopy caught my eye from issue 1and I happily snapped up the latest issue whenever I could, no mean feat as its distribution was woeful.

When it comes to bike mags Used Motorcycle Guide was my fave. An A5, two wheeled Jalopy type publication that consisted of an editorial by Bill Fowler followed by readers' stories. The good news is that it sort of still survives in an online form here... http://yewemmgee.blogspot.com/ including all the past readers stories dating back to the mid 80s.

[AutoshiteBoy]

CAR Magazine. I'm still obsessed with it, from the '70s until around 2000.

[mercrocker]

My first car mags were given to me by relatives who either found them on a train or bought them during one of their 5-year car-buying cycles. They were always Autocar or The Motor and I read them avidly despite not understanding the tech stuff.

I seemed to grow with them as they tended to be fairly stiffly written originally and educational in that lofty teacher sense that seemed to be the way of the entire adult world in the early Sixties. As I grew into teenage years the magazines got ever more racily reflective of the Permissive Age and front covers began featuring mini-skirted fluff leaning seductively on Lancia coupes thus guaranteeing my attention for a few more years.

As soon as I had money of my own from paper rounds and the like I started buying Custom Car - back then it was more of a linear development of the kind of stuff in Car Mechanics where Bill from Castle Bromwich sent in pictures of a Consul Capri with a flight deck rivalling a Stratofortress. The obsession with metalflake, jackup kits and Wolfies came later as did the nekkid ladies.

To counterbalance this pulp world of motoring sub-culture I used to get "Car" off a mate's Dad and immersed myself in the work of George Bishop, Doug Blain and Setright, looking forward avidly to each handed-down issue. Ralph's Dad was a serial Volvosaab botherer and hated British cars with a passion that would have seen me shopping him to the Gestapo in Nazi Germany and I quite understood why he bought "Car."

MotorSport was something I would read if given but never bought for myself although it has remained something I can pick up over and over and still refer to for race results and commentaries (Jenks was an early hero of mine) for which I am grateful to have acquired several bound Volumes from early Fifties to late Sixties. It would be a bugger to look things up otherwise....

I bought Classic Cars before it became T&CC from school days and only stopped when I moved in with Mrs R. and had to lug 30 years worth from various hiding places into our loft. Some of them are still up there although I binned most of 'em later on. I gave that mag up when the greasy oik from Top Gear started writing in there and their prime for me was Michael Bowler, Lionel Burrell through to Tony Dron who seemed a good lad.

Looking back as I write this it has dawned on me how many months and years I must have handed over some of my paper-boy wages straight back to the bloody newsagent for some of these magazines! I also collected On Four Wheels in its first print run in 1973, got to all 8 volumes in binders and have lugged those bloody things around for half a century as well.....

[Hooli]

CAR Magazine. I'm still obsessed with it, from the '70s until around 2000.

I've got a box full of them, from when it was 'Small car & Mini Owner' in about '57 up till some point in the 70s.

[mercrocker]

1962, I think SC&MO started....

[Hooli]

1962, I think SC&MO started....

I'll go through the box, I think they are that old.

[Warren t claim]

I was passed down maybe a dozen 67-8 copies of Autocar/Motor in the early 70s.

I really enjoyed the Disconnected Jottings cartoons drawn by Bary Appleby of Gambols fame and the intricate pencil drawings used in their Look Out! Be in the know! feature.

[mercrocker]

Those were Gordon Horner drawings I think.

[mercrocker]

I also liked "From the Grid" by Eoin Young - I was never really into motor racing but enjoyed the background gossip of the teams, drivers, wives etc. and always read that page. Donkey's later, I met Eoin at Goodwood Revival (quite by chance - I'm no ligger!) and mentioned how much I liked reading his column. He dragged me up to the tea van and bought me a cuppa!

[mercrocker]

CAR Magazine. I'm still obsessed with it, from the '70s until around 2000.

One of the key things I remember about "Car" was their early rejection of the embargo cabal that existed amongst the weeklies. No mention was ever made of any new introduction by Automotorcar and the like even though they had been entrusted with test prototypes and invited to early previews.

That all went out the door with Car and hardly a month went by without some cardboard-clad mule in blurry photographs being name-guessed by the mag. They also carried on the tradition started in MotorSport by not giving a fig who they upset if they criticised a car that needed criticising. You needed a pretty cryptic understanding of the critique in The Motor or Autocar to know when something wasn't quite right. MotorSport often found themselves denied access to press fleets and even had advertising suspended because of their refusal to dodge honesty.