Revamped 'CAR Magazine'

pburns

Read this as a nipper in the late '90s, loved it then. Great writing, great design... It really fostered my love of cars.

Hovever it went downhill in the '90s & was in a pretty pitiful state. Hugely revamped last month though (in conjunction with a new website) & I have to say I'm pretty impressed. Great design, off-beat articles. Top Gear mag is crap, this moves the game on...

Even in the internet-age I think there's a place for really good mags...

colm_mcm

Maybe Barlow's contributions aren't as annoying when you can't hear him.

SGKM

Yeh I'd agree with you that Top Gear is crap. Its full of ads and articles about stuff that has nothing to do with cars. The best car magazines are Evo and Autocar,they're the only ones that I buy.

IrishRover

I've been buying Car magazine again recently, and I was just thinking how it's still a better quality magazine than the others. For some reason I like how it's slightly smaller than the other magazines too.

Top Gear Magazine is more of a Lads Mag really. Pretty soon it'll be competing with FHM :rolleyes: Not surprised though, seeing as the Top Gear programme is getting less and less about cars. Remember the episode about the caravans, and then the one where their challenge was to each make an amphibous car and go out on the lake with them. They were entertaining enough, but after half way through the show I was wondering had they given up on reviewing cars completely.

Re Car magazine, I have a lot of old ones from the early to mid 90's and I didn't notice a lack of quality at all. If anything I thought the writing may have been too flowery and erudite. There were a couple of guys who seemed to have been writing since before the model T came out, and took cars for weekends up to the Scottish Highlands to test them out and mused about the lobster they had for lunch in one restaurant and how the boot was large enough for a wicker basket and all their other gear for picnicing in the countryside.

October's issue has a very nice cover picture. It's one of those long exposure nightshots with an Audi S6, a Merc E63 and some Beemer.



BTW yeah I think you've a point about him being less annoying in print alright Colm.

pburns

Yeah, Barlow's a bit of a prat.

A low point of last months issue was Barlow's sycophantic posturing with Steve Coogan who for some inexplicable reason was trumpeted as the star turn in a journey back from Maranello in a Ferrari 599. Coogan didn't write the article like previous well known contributors such as Rowan Atkinson.

Far as I could see, he was just there so Barlow could give him a damn good arse-licking...

IrishRover

Yeah I remember thinking Rowan Atkinson's article's were very good. Will have a look for some later.

BTW, if ds20prefecture is reading this, there's an article in October's Car Magazine by Will Self about his love for the Citroen DS. He says driving it was "like making love to a goddess on a waterbed".