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Hachette-Appointed Interim Editor John Owens' Leaked Car & Driver Editor's Column
What the? — is this Garmin's New Colorado 300 GPS Unit?

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thunder; now eta-powered
01/08/09

In reply to Hachette-Appointed Interim Editor John Owens' Leaked Car & Driver Editor's Column
I read C&D slavishly back in my junior high & high school days, then figured out that the writing and the content they provided was pretty pedestrian compared to other car mags. Things haven't changed much in 20-some years, nor with new leadership (and I use that term loosely.)
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scottcom36 has Weekday DT's, Weekend OD's
01/08/09

In reply to Hachette-Appointed Interim Editor John Owens' Leaked Car & Driver Editor's Column
Murilee Martin for C/D editor!
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Armand
01/08/09

@scottcom36: Seconded. But pretty much any of us who comment on this website could write a better column than this guy.
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Franzouse
01/08/09

In reply to Hachette-Appointed Interim Editor John Owens' Leaked Car & Driver Editor's Column
And another of Hachette Filipachi 's titles turns to utter crap on its way to extinction; you should so what they did to the European magazine landscape
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Plecostomus [Tyrrell]
01/08/09

In reply to Hachette-Appointed Interim Editor John Owens' Leaked Car & Driver Editor's Column
Holy shitjesus,

This is so awful I can't even believe it.

Seriously?? I honestly could write better Editor's Columns than this fool.

What idiot car magazine makes a non-carguy an EDITOR?

WHO DOES THAT?!

I mean, that's like hiring the CEO of Home Depot to run Chrysler! Look how well that turned out.

This is why I don't have a subscription to C&D.
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PatFromGundo
01/08/09

In reply to Hachette-Appointed Interim Editor John Owens' Leaked Car & Driver Editor's Column
Did anyone else hear Andy Rooney's voice while reading this?
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Cognitive Friction
01/08/09

@PatFromGundo: I make a point of never hearing Andy Rooney's voice, even inside my own head
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Deartháir II
01/08/09

In reply to Hachette-Appointed Interim Editor John Owens' Leaked Car & Driver Editor's Column
I feel dirty just saying it, but Diddles could have done a better job than that.

GOD. Agreeing with Wojzilla, complimenting Wert and almost complimenting Diddles, all in one week. You'd think I'd spent the week watching Hugh Grant movies, rather than the Dark Angel box set.
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pauljones
01/08/09

@Deartháir: a Cruder, Fart-Joke Version of graverobber:

Dark Angel?

Here, allow me to let you in on a little secret Guinness beer and The L-Word with no sound.
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Ray Wert
01/08/09

@Deartháir: a Cruder, Fart-Joke Version of graverobber: When did I get a compliment? This I got to see!
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Deartháir II
01/08/09

@Ray Wert: Yesterday, on the article about the discussion with GM's VP of Marketing. Third page, I think, in response to Charles.

Oh hell with it, I'll give you a link, I know you're busy.

[jalopnik.com]
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Cognitive Friction
01/08/09

In reply to Hachette-Appointed Interim Editor John Owens' Leaked Car & Driver Editor's Column
All these years owning a Santa Fe, and I never thought to call it the "Santa Fee" when picking it up from the repair shop. I'm so disappointed in myself.
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Cognitive Friction
01/08/09

In reply to Hachette-Appointed Interim Editor John Owens' Leaked Car & Driver Editor's Column
I'll pass on this conver-sation and concentrate on emptying the nut bowl.

Usually you pay double for that kind of action, Cotton
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FormerlyPreferredCustomer
01/08/09

In reply to Hachette-Appointed Interim Editor John Owens' Leaked Car & Driver Editor's Column
Hachette has really let its standards down since Saddam's involvement ended.

Seriously, C/D has long been my favorite car magazine, but recently it has been getting pretty difficult to maintain my enthusiasm. The most recent issue I received appears to be printed on newsprint, or perhaps tissue paper, and the lithography is so bad that I thought they were doing an old-timey effect on some of the photos of the S8.

Moreover, the article on the M3/911 contained two glaring typos (again rather than against, viscous rather than vicious, unless there is a viscous circle I am not aware of). Come on, guys, this is 3rd grade stuff.

The most galling thing, for me, is that my subscription renewal worked out to about 2 c. an issue. Seriously, C/D--if you are having trouble making ends meet, stop giving away the frigging magazine. I'd gladly pay a couple of bucks an issue if the ink didn't smear on my hands. Compared to Automobile (which has its own content issues), the quality difference is startling.

I'd like to abandon C/D altogether in favor of Jalop, but I can't take Jalop into the can without worrying about dropping my iPhone into the toilet, and as intoxicating as Siler's prose is, you guys still don't do instrumented testing, and I loves me some bench racing. Maybe I'll just replace it with Car.
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Ray Wert
01/08/09

@FormerlyPreferredCustomer: And we're not planning on changing either of those things any time soon, which is why there needs to be outlets that provide both the services of being written on paper and doing instrumented testing. But I struggle some days to find more reasons other than those two.
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BRAWNDO_POWERED
01/08/09

@FormerlyPreferredCustomer:

I pay $10 a month for CAR, and it's worth it.

What is up with the American rags? I just noticed that there is not a single American car magazine I can stomach, my monthly literacy drain has turned into [i]Octane, CAR,[/i] and [i]Classic Car[/i].
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P161911 probably shoudn't have
01/08/09

@BRAWNDO_POWERED: Probably some of the best American ones are the trio of Hemmings glossy mags: Sports and Exotic, Classic Car, and Muscle Machines. But they don't cover new stuff. They are the closest thing to Jalopnik in print.
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P161911 probably shoudn't have
01/08/09

In reply to Hachette-Appointed Interim Editor John Owens' Leaked Car & Driver Editor's Column
I actually subscribe to Popular Photography only because I have a slight interest in photography and I can subscribe for 2 years for the cost of buying about 3 issues. I've never even bothered to read most of the editorials. The only good writer they had (Herb Keppler) died a while back and they barely even mentioned it in the magazine. I had to go back and check a back issue when I didn't see his column for a couple of months. The worst part of Popular Photography, and probably why it is so cheap is that it is about 75% ads. I just hope C&D doesn't turn into some super cheap subscription with even less content.

This column looks like he just read a few back issues and talked to whoever happend to be hanging around the office.

Maybe C&D will at least get prettier pictures now.
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Deartháir II
01/08/09

@P161911 ready for another V-8 instead of the current all I-...: There's a reason I buy CAR and evo instead.

And 0-60 now, but that's cuz Ensign Wesley and The Postfather both write for them.
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Landau_Calrissian loves our President Camacho.
01/08/09

In reply to Hachette-Appointed Interim Editor John Owens' Leaked Car & Driver Editor's Column
Oh well.

With car magazines, I NEVER read them for the articles anyway. Just like another type of magazine.
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pauljones
01/08/09

@Landau_Calrissian:

You know, the great thing about books and magazines is that there are lots of cool pictures.
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Landau_Calrissian loves our President Camacho.
01/08/09

@pauljones: I know! Besides, car magazine writing in general blows anyway. Made up subjective feelings about a car's "feel" and "essence" are just so much male soap-opera hype.
"The 2009 Camry: We give it 9/10 stars for perfect build quality, affordability, and reliability, but the je ne sais quoi of its essence conflicts with its sticky cornering and joie de vivre". What tripe.
Show me some pictures already, and I can imagine my own trite mumbling.
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MushyHeirloom
01/08/09

@Landau_Calrissian: We give it 7/10 stars for decent build quality, reasonable affordability, excellent reliability, and livable performance, but its pillow-soft ride and Novocaine-like, though secure, steering lead to boredom on all off-interstate trips. The exterior, in classic Subaru fashion, is bland but ugly - you either dislike it or you're legally blind. Low points here include the giant "wart" over the grille (a trait shared with the Corolla and new Prius) and slightly awkward rear styling; however, in profile, the car isn't unattractive. The base model's hubcaps are unlikely to be correctly centered, so choose the optional alloy wheels for the sake of your fellow drivers' sanity.
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stuntpuppy
01/08/09

In reply to Hachette-Appointed Interim Editor John Owens' Leaked Car & Driver Editor's Column
Tough crowd. It's a rough draft, and the hyphens are obviously due to formatting requirements of the mag.
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Ray Wert
01/08/09

@stuntpuppy: What? "Ex-ecutive?"
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Das ASHloch (achtundsiebzig)
01/08/09

In reply to Hachette-Appointed Interim Editor John Owens' Leaked Car & Driver Editor's Column
He should have just submitted a photo and apologized for going 25 words over.
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smalleyxb122
01/08/09

@Ash78: That is clever. I like it.
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smalleyxb122
01/08/09

In reply to Hachette-Appointed Interim Editor John Owens' Leaked Car & Driver Editor's Column
Alright, Ray. It's clearly not well written, but it is, at least, coherent. At no point did I wonder what the hell he was talking about. As a first draft, I'd probably let it go (unless I was tasked with editing it).

It reads a bit more like a stream-of-consciousness outline than a true first draft, and when taken as such, it is far more acceptable.
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Ray Wert
01/08/09

@smalleyxb122: Are you serious? Never mind the well-written part. It's almost as if he said "OK, which advertisers aren't getting enough column space in the magazine? OK, let's talk them up." It's terrifyingly bad.
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smalleyxb122
01/08/09

@Ray Wert: My apologies. I tend to be overly blind to pandering. When there is enough of it, it no longer registers.
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Deartháir II
01/08/09

@smalleyxb122: I have to agree with Wert here. FUCK. It's happened again. I need a shower.

This just reeks of a paper written by someone who knows nothing about cars, so he picked a blatantly obvious topic -- particularly for a changeover at C&D, a car mag roundly criticised for its tendency to heap love and affection on BMW and Honda/Acura -- and interviewed his staff. The writing is weak, to be sure, and he broke multiple grammatical rules (which I routinely ignore in my comments, but then, I'm not getting paid, except in my COTD bottles of scotch), but more than that, he only said things that any enthusiast, reading his magazine, is already abundantly aware of. What? The G8 is good? Say it ain't so!

This would be fine for the AUTOS section of a local newspaper; not for C&D.
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bzr
01/08/09

In reply to Hachette-Appointed Interim Editor John Owens' Leaked Car & Driver Editor's Column
Pretty cliche. I didn't know he was a non-car guy, but is he a non-writer too? I wonder if Stephan Wilkinson was ridiculed this badly as well, but at least he ended up writing a great book about it. (I suggest you guys all pick it up too, at the very least reading about another man's Project Car Hell should discourage you from your own like it failed to do with me.)

Oh, and speaking of which. Jalopnik, you still looking for interns? I put on my big-boy shoes this morning and even fixed up my hair, pretty please?
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Plecostomus [Tyrrell]
01/08/09

@bzr: Hey, I'd be a better intern. Pick me! I've run out of writing work and now I'm stuck managing image assets...
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Hachette-Appointed Interim Editor John Owens' Leaked Car & Driver Editor's Column

What the? — is this Garmin's New Colorado 300 GPS Unit?

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