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Detroit, 2:48 AM
Mon Dec 7
13 posts in the last 24 hours
Tip your editors:
Editor-in-Chief:
Ray Wert | | AIM
Road Test Editor:
Wes Siler |
Weekend Editor:
Murilee Martin |
Associate Editor - Houston:
Associate Editor - Detroit:
Editor-at-Large:
Contributors:
John Krewson |
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
12/04/09
Now I refuse to buy a newsstand copy. The magazine has really lost its edge, but the thing that angered me the most were the out-and-out lies that C&D continually spread about global warming science.
I'll pay good money for independent automotive journalism, but not for sleazy propaganda from the oil industry. Let them pay for it.
12/04/09
12/04/09
'Runnin' Out Of Talent: The Inside Story Of My Indy 500 Career' by P. Bedard
Not holding my breath.
12/04/09
I'm not sure when Csaba and his pals devolved into cranking out the kind of humorless politically-charged bluster that's better suited for Fox and Friends, but that's when they lost me. And their pathetic attempts at redesigning the magazine make the average high school weekly newspaper look slick and sophisticated. I'll scan it while I'm shopping for European car magazines at Barnes and Noble, but I think I'll pass any other time.
12/03/09
a) not dead
b) back at C&D
Who knew? Well, back to my copy of 'Excellence'.
12/03/09
Tom McCahill (Google him, kiddies) forgot more than David E. will ever know.
12/03/09
Conversely, Rob Walker, who actually was "to the manor born", and knew every inch of the F1 paddock that he covered for Road&Track, didn't exude a whiff of that snobbish crap.
And AFAIK Tom McCahill was the first auto journalist to make car tests fun to read-who else measured trunk space by how many cases of beer it would hold? Great stuff.
12/03/09
On McCahill. Legend has it that he once actually TRIED to roll a Corviar and couldn't. He also is responsible for the 0-60 test that is used to this day. "Uncle Tom", as he liked to be called, was my hero as a car crazy kid.
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12/03/09
1) Buy a Car and Driver.
2) Open Car and Driver.
3) Buy a Grassroots Motorsports.
4) Open Grassroots Motorsports and place inside of previously opened Car and Driver.
5) Read.
6) Repeat.
12/03/09
Burn!
12/03/09
Ok fine I have a few minutes to kill (apologies for any retyping errors.)
From page 76, January C&D:
Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys don't get far.
I purchased a 1988 Peugeot 505 Turbo S to race in the 24 Hours of LeMons. My goal was to have the car ready for Arse-Freeze-Apalooza at Thunderhill the weekend after Christmas 2008.
Two weeks before the event, we had unseasonably cold weather in Seattle. Temperatures were in the low 20s. There was alot of snow on the ground when we set out for California on Christmas morning.
But snow wasn't the problem. The roads were bare and wet for the first 50 miles-and then we hit a patch of black ice near DePont, Washington, on I-5. Abruptly, all traction was lost. The truck and trailer began fishtailing and off we went into the ditch beside the freeway at 55 mph. We rolled at least once. The truck and trailer were totalled. My wife, Brianne, my co-driver, Alan, and I walked away with only minor bruises. The race car broke free of its tie-downs inside the trailer and went for a tumble like a drumstick in a giant bag of Shake 'n Bake. It landed on its wheels on the wall of the trailer.
When the tow truck arrived, they had to rip the top (now a wall) off the trailer to pull out the race car. After all that, I drove the $500 Peugeot home. The only damage it sustained was a slightly wrinkled roof and some broken glass. Sadly, we didn't make it to Arse-Freeze-Apalooza, but we did make it to Goin' for Broken in Reno on Memorial Day. The weather was much better.
Sean Green, Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys, Renton, Washington.
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I was in the back seat of the truck and let me tell you it came on very quick but thankfully was over just as quickly. I was totally uninjured and Sean and Brianne just had lightly banged up knees. Thankfully the Peugeot survived fine and as Sean noted he drove it home 30 miles to his shop after which we celebrated Christmas at Denny's.
12/04/09
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12/03/09
1. I understand the desire to front the art more by bringing the photos all the way out to the bleed lines, but it brings more attention to the layout and less to the photos. When the stories all look different, you spend more time looking _at_ them, rather than seeing simply the content.
2. The comparison charts are a nice change, but every other stat sheet in the new issue seems to be a bunch of unformatted, teensy-tiny text dumped into the bottom of the article. Would it kill you to put each piece of data on a line and a box around it? What was wrong with that system? I can barely read it now, and I'm 29 with perfect reading eyesight.
3. What's with sprinkling the 10Best reviews through the rest of the 10Best content? Sure it makes for a cohesive 10Best section, but who gives a sh!t when you can't follow what's in the section? It's like dumping your salad, main course and dessert into the same bowl: it may be easier to tell what's yours from your neighbor's, but that doesn't mean I want to eat it.
4. Some of the content changes I like - particularly the changes to the Upfront section, which as you admit simply can't compete with blogs. But where is the promised "longer-form journalism" to fill in the rest? Maybe I missed something, but in the January issue I noted (1) a first drive/preview, (2) a bunch of 10Best content, (3) a single comparison test, (4) a few "short takes", and (5) some non-car content. No full Road Tests (by which I mean a full data sheet, the "thumbs up"/"thumbs down"/conclusion box, and two (used to be three) "Counterpoints). No extended essays.
I can see what you took away, but what have you added? Where's the minivan trip to the Yukon, or the sports cars in Baja? The racing essays? Eddie, I really root for what you're doing, but as of this month the magazine looks like TTAC without the readability.
12/03/09
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12/03/09
At least they aren't as bad as the likes of Maxim or Cosmo. Those guys milk advertising for all its worth, with every second page being an advertisement. Even many of the stories are thinly veiled marketing. But then that's a whole other story.
Regarding this new redesign, it's better than the redesign introduced last years, but honestly it's nothing special. It's pretty derivative of the current trends in magazine designs. It kind of looks like is was designed by committee afraid to change too much, or a more traditional magazine designer who isn't really capable of embracing a completely contemporary design. So there's a bit of a clashing of styles and a bit too much inconsistency.
One place I've always found C&D lacking in was car photography. There's no sense of style or creativity to any of the photography. It's like the difference you get between cinematography on Top Gear compared to pretty much any American car show.
At least it isn't like one of the tuner magazines. Now those are crap. They'll run a headline like: 1000HP Honda Civic Daily Driver! Read the story and it turns out there are no dyno figures and the car isn't really driven anywhere other than to a handful of car shows. Ultimately, the article is little more than a shopping list of aftermarket parts.
12/03/09
Hell Ben Wojdyla has far better articles on Jalopnik than I have found in a C&D or Motor Trend in ages. (See : [jalopnik.com] )
I found I have changed my monthly buying habits, which used to consist of; a visit to the car rag rack and a review of what new car was being tested this month.
I now get my fill of news, well written articles, great photographs and videos through sources like Jalopnik, Winding Road, or Autoblog.
I find if I am actually buying a magazine it must educate and engage me with passion, thought, and artistic merit. Pick up an issue of Garage, or even a EVO. There is something about the UK publications.
I bought a C&D last month for the first time in years. I was disappointed. I would love for these pillars of American auto journalism to be around in years to come, but man they need to evolve.
Survival of the fittest.
12/03/09
I am, however, a psychology major. I could happily tell you all sorts of subjective Freudian stuff by psychoanalyzing both your choice of words and the changes you have insisted be made to the magazine. If I cared to go that far in depth. And I don't. But from an I/O Psychology standpoint, you appear to have done a good job. I'll reserve final judgment until I see it, however.
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