Which car has sold the most magazines?

[k-ink]

I bought this months Evo to read all about the development of turbo cars over the years. On the cover is a lovely red F40. Now this got me thinking. This car must have shifted so many magazines over the years. Possibly more than any other car? No idea, but it must be up there. Think how many covers this has been plastered over since 1987. And it is still being used as an icon.

So, any other contenders to the title of most popular cover car?

[james_gt3rs]

Golf GTI, McLaren F1?

[jake15919]

Putting an E-type Aston DB5 or MGB pretty much guarantees good sales of classic car mags.

Some people will buy anything if there is a Ferrari on it.

[marky911]

Porsche 911.
It's the benchmark for most other manufacturers and is featured on most car mags at some point. Not forgetting the Marque specific mags that are out each month, of which there are 3 or 4.

And yes I know, I'm biased.

[williamp]

slightly OT, but I remember a while back people were questionning why Autosport has a ferrari F1 car on its front cover so often. The answer wasa that sales did indeed increase if they did!

[Twincam16]

I've got nearly every issue of Classic Cars going back ten years, plus a pretty large number of Classic & Sports Cars.

Thankfully the front cover of CC is repeated on the spine so at a glance I can tell you the most frequent visitor to their front cover is a red Jaguar, practically a dead heat between the E-Type and the Mk2.

C&SC on the other hand seems to like the Ferrari 308/328 more than any other, again in red.

Truth is, red is one of the highest-impact colours for any car there is. Plus, it presses many emotional buttons (Ferrari, Italian racing cars, that flat red with chrome embellishments used on exciting cars of the '60s, '80s supercars on bedroom-wall posters etc), so it's hardly surprising.

Photographers on car magazines know this too. I've worked with a fair few of them now and the first thing they'll do with a group shot is move the most brightly-coloured car to the front to emphasise perspective.

[k-ink]

Yes I did consider the F1 as well. But think how many magazines the F40 shifted even before that came out. Then the F40 gets a second wind as it gets compared to all th new breeds again.

Good call regarding the classic cars. You may be onto something there. I guess each magazine has a small circulation compared to the new car mags, but there are so many of them to compensate. So I think you could be right. Maybe something like an E-type could be ahead.

[ROOODBOY]

Countach?

I buy any magazine with a Countach on the cover, and they've been on the cover of magazines since the prototype in 1971!

[LuS1fer]

Countach was an automatic "must buy" - far more so than any Ferrari, Porsche or weird Cizeta. I also imagine far more people bought mags back in the 70s and 80's pre-internet.

[300bhp/ton]

k-ink said:

I bought this months Evo to read all about the development of turbo cars over the years. On the cover is a lovely red F40. Now this got me thinking. This car must have shifted so many magazines over the years. Possibly more than any other car? No idea, but it must be up there. Think how many covers this has been plastered over since 1987. And it is still being used as an icon.

So, any other contenders to the title of most popular cover car?

In the UK a Defender maybe. There are 3-5 Land Rover mags monthly, so hundreds and hundreds sold over the years.

[superman84]

marky911 said:

Porsche 911.
It's the benchmark for most other manufacturers and is featured on most car mags at some point. Not forgetting the Marque specific mags that are out each month, of which there are 3 or 4.

And yes I know, I'm biased.

Not sure really about that. I mean they all look the same and they're really quite uninspiring especially compared to fezzas, lambos, astons etc