Autocar

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baSkey

Original Poster:

14,291 posts

232 months

Monday 31st July 2006
quotequote all
is anyone else getting bored of it? I have a good level of faith in their testers and journalists (which is why i haven't cancelled my sub yet) but the road tests seem to be getting shorter and there hasn't been a 'look at this daft thing we've made goodwin do' story for a while.

i am sure this weeks will be ace and i'll change my mind but i am quite disenfranchised at the moment. even 0-100-0 took all of 5 mins to read this year.

is it just me..?

[...and my evo hasn't come yet!

i haven't read all of last months evo yet so no matter but still...]

baSkey

Original Poster:

14,291 posts

232 months

Monday 31st July 2006
quotequote all
Zod said:
They make up most of their scoops.


really..? i just thought they recydled AMS ones!

i leave those bits until i am really bored - that sort of stuff is a bit "auto express" .

____________________

anyone remember the timing cars on a welsh b-road item. or when sideways challenge/0-100-0/trackday car of the year/car of the year/through europe in a murkylager&FRS...where the kind of stories they did. when you got 5 pages on the f355/911gt2...

baSkey

Original Poster:

14,291 posts

232 months

Monday 31st July 2006
quotequote all
garlick said:
As an Autocar employee, I really should get involved here. Already you have told me a fair bit about what we do wrong, and I agree that we are great at road trip stories etc. Anyway feed the info and i promise i'll listen.



oh yeah you even got a mention in the ldn speed record thing..!

let me win the £20k and i'll delete the posts!

i think i'd like more 'old skool' in depth articles. i appreciate the market pressures but i think auto express does well from the 'news'/13 yr old nerd end of the market. i know loads of people (myself included) who went:

AE > TG > TG&AC >AC&revs(!!!!)& MINIWorld & FORD MAGS > AC & ANYTHING REALLY!>AC&evo

ac = autocar
ae = autoexpress
tg = top gear

now really considering just keeping evo and getting a few odd things like octane again. maybe it's a function of lack of time as well as the articles...

baSkey

Original Poster:

14,291 posts

232 months

Monday 31st July 2006
quotequote all
i don't know what anyone else thinks BUT (!)

you know stories like the car property ladder thing - (red sh4gged 6series) - i think you need to make more out of those. actually work your way through the cars and then serialise it. i don'teven know if that's still going on... did the pair of them just give up..?!

i am a bit of a sucker for the trying to make a £300 car go at 150mph sort of stories too.

another idea for editorial content might be doing a £2006 challenge 9a bit like Grassroots Motorsport magazine in the US) BUT getting professional teams to do it. so try and get prodrive vs williams to do challenges with old maestro turbos they've built for 2 grand... you could get university courses like at Herts involved and they could compete against the top guys now... you could serialise bits of the build up to that - a page on a couple of teams each week.

there's a good chance i am being hugely naive about the publishing industry but some of these ideas might lead to something..!

Edited by baSkey on Monday 31st July 14:46

baSkey

Original Poster:

14,291 posts

232 months

Monday 31st July 2006
quotequote all
JonRB said:
MGYoung said:
Autocar is a great mag but personally I would like to see more features on used cars that enthusiasts would want to buy. I’m not talking about 40 year old classics as there are already plenty mags that cover these sorts of vehicle but cars from the let 80’s to late 90’s. Full details and roadtests of forgotten performance cars for varying budgets.
The thing is, there are a plethora of used car mags around that cater for what you are requesting.

Surely Autocar has always been a magazine that reports on the "now" rather than the past?


i agree.
i think articles about 'car culture' which may involve buying and selling or just hooning around would include used cars and that would probably be enough. that 309gti versus mcs was a big disappointment and the articles were too short. jethros M3 stories in evo are to a similar aim but far better!

baSkey

Original Poster:

14,291 posts

232 months

Monday 31st July 2006
quotequote all
Los Angeles said:
It has no competitor.



Maybe that's the reason. getting a touch complacent perhaps (but not cynically)!

baSkey

Original Poster:

14,291 posts

232 months

Monday 31st July 2006
quotequote all
I was only kidding! I suspect there is a lot more having to appeal to a certain demographic etc etc than you being complacent!

baSkey

Original Poster:

14,291 posts

232 months

Monday 31st July 2006
quotequote all
i am glad i posted this now.

autocar is unique in being a good weekly and it has soooo much history that i think we genuinely all want it to continue to succeed.

the likes of harris, for example, can write some interesting stuff and certainly exude car enthusiasm. david vivian has a very unique style and is clearly more of an enthusiast than a true "hand" to coin harris and that appeals to me. goodwin is a grease monkey equivalent to vivian. cropley is the last of the old skool. having sat alongside sutcliffe on the sideways challenge he is anther "hand". i really miss peter robinson but otherwise autocar has some of the best writers.

auto expess is sh1t. you don't need to [/]compete with them!

i hope all this does help and i hope you forgive me cheap joke!!