We'll admit that over the last couple of years, we haven't enjoyed Car and Driver or Automobile as much as we once did. With their young talent pools having been cherry-picked by David Pecker and his posse to put together mph and Dan Neil having filled his plate in Los Angeles, there's a certain spark that's missing. And while Primedia's cost-cutting measures are legendary (we recently heard an anecdote that a low-level editorial position at Hot Rod pays $15,000 a year less than it did two decades ago), Hachette, according to Sweet Peet D. is putting the screws to Csaba Csere to trim costs. What does this mean? It means, bye, Brock!
Now while we don't always agree with Brock Yates, and sometimes even vehemently disagree with him, we've always respected and admired the guy, and his on-again/off-again association with C/D over the years is one of the great love stories of writer and publication over the last four decades. Some might say Yates is old and out of touch; we say he's a link to the past, and for all of the teasing we've done to him, there are few men in this industry that we admire more. Bad swing of the hatchet, Hachette.
What's more, apparently longtime C/D staffer Tony Swan's been pushed into an earlier-than-planned retirement, and Automobile's Mark Gillies has been brought in as Csaba's Number Two. So where does this leave Automobile? Frankly, it gives the mag a chance to reinvent itself, which for all of its yearly redesigns, it hasn't truly managed to do in the last couple of years. We're curious to see how all of this shakes out in six months or so.
What's more, David E. Davis has a new mag in the works. Why? There are already too many car magazines. Do we really need another?
On the Table [Autoextremist, 2nd & 3rd items]
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Calling Captain Chaos: Errors in the Cannonball Run [Internal]