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The most interesting feature of a Classic Car mag/website


Electric Leyland

What is the most interesting feature of a Classic car magazine or website?  

29 members have voted

  1. 1. What is the most interesting feature of a Classic car magazine or website?

    • Straightforward decent pictures of cars
      12
    • Articles on mechanical issues
      3
    • Readers letters / Forum discussions
      0
    • Head to head car showdowns / Top 10 lists
      2
    • Marketplace news / Auction news (including ebay)
      0
    • Events / what's on / club news
      0
    • Modifying / Pimping classics
      2
    • Classified / For Sale sections
      5
    • Classics in Media / TV / Film / Memory Lane
      4
    • Other - please specify
      1


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I absolutely hate Top 10s and all the other 'great cars for the winter/summer/for £5000' etc etc. They are just excuses for production staff to stick together some stock photos and whack together a cheap 'article' with no thought required. They always feature the usual suspects anyway - MGB, Mini, Midget, Herald, Spitfire, TRs, Jags, together with a 'expert' (usually someone who sells them or sells/makes parts for the model) pontificating on how wonderful they are. C & SC had a guy going on about how great rubber bumpered MGBs were as a starter classic as they're such 'great value' - well if you had 20 of the sods hanging around the back of your showroom you're not going to say they're crap, are you?This sort of article have come close to totally ruining Practical Classics in the last year or two. However the recent editor has just left, so maybe things will get better in the future.

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  • 4 years later...

I don't read these magazines tbh, but from a couple, I've seen truly coma-inducing, boring technical articles written by people who own garages, and just do it because it's in a way, an advert. In PPC magazine, they have someone doing a monthly report on his rolling road 'getting a car running better' tuning thing, which is just because he services all the cars owned by staff. Also reports on staff cars which just seem pointless, and more of a personal diary.

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I just had an internal rant about the pictures in last months C&SC - five frontal shots of the Sinclair, one very partial rear shot. Same with the gorgeous Maserati, iirc one tiny shot of the rear. Too often there are only shots from the front, all at the same angle but with different backgrounds... aargh.

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I love the "Lost and found" and "rediscovered" bits. They're the first bit I look at. Then I look at the price guide and laugh. When I've recovered from that I have a look at what the writers have broken / blagged / had fixed. I've been enjoying C&SC's Jensen Interceptor, I love the way that there seems to be more than bit of "Christ this thing is expensive" hidden from the articles. The gearbox saga has kept me giggling for a while, been there, done that, know what it costs.I've spoken to PC staff a couple of times and they seem like good folks (in fact, I think a few lurk here) but the PC does seem to rely heavily on blagging a go in a few cars, quick scan through Wikis, chat to a few people who know about 'em and cobbling together a few paragraphs from that. Actual knowledge of the vehicles themselves seems a bit scant. Readers Resto type articles are probably really simple, get the restorer to write it, re-write it so it seems first-hand, plug a few companies. Job done.My favourite test articles are normally in C&SC or CAR. I love the idea of taking the first E-type to Geneva to recreate a photo, taking a Ferrari to the end of the world, etc. Colin Goodwin and Matt Bishop did an article moons ago about buying two £750 coupés (A Capri 3.0S and an early RX7) and taking them to a dragstrip to see how much poke they'd lost. There was also the legendary "Crap Car Cup".

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There was also the legendary "Crap Car Cup".

Which won? I only had the issue that covered the first round - Visa Super X, R9 and Strada IIRC.
I think it was the R9. They killed the Strada and the Visa was falling apart.
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Unless there's a specific car featured, I don't buy car magazines any more and I haven't done for years.The write ups about people's cars here are much more entertaining, the ebay thread is all you could ever want from laughing at classified ads and I don't have to wade through double page spreads from Machine Mart or some MG specialist.I do buy old magazines sometimes, and I owe trigger a billion beers for his work on scans

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