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If there was a new classic car mag


saabhappy

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I think I still have the bilge I penned for OT and Joypal somewhere on one of the HDD's. I think some of its PDF though so will have to convert it back...

Please don't republish the stuff you sold to me yet, as crappy a businessman as I am, I do have OT3 pretty much print ready. I just have to pull the trigger.
I wont, I was kind of hoping that you would bung it up on the interweb. Though I have some more stuff I didnt send (on the Bimmer 320 and the caravan of love, the Marina that lost its wheel and on my first moter the Austin 1300, as well as some basic dizzly mechanekery stuff for numptys) I was putting together - I also have several articles on Dual Diagnosis and Drug Induced Psychosis as well as a research piece on the transmission of nosocomial infections by the use of pens in an intensive care setting - yeah! Well snappy that one.
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The round argument idea is close to being good, but it does fail rather dismally once the late '60s/ early 70's are reached.Cortina 1.3 'Decor' is a classic, but the 2000E isn't.Volvo 240DL is, but the 264 GLE isn't.US spec XJ-S is, but UK one isn't.Actually, that works about right in 'ere dunnit?

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I'd like to see less immaculately/expensively restored cars featured, and more lightly haggard daily drivers.It'd be fun to have a broad 'cheap car' mag like Jalopy, their cut off was about 10 years old - not giving a fugg about potential cla""ic status.There are swathes of cars, especially from the 1980s and 1990s that don't have any magazine recognition at all.

Abso-bloody-lutely. Bollocks to pages and pages of pictures of cars restored to the last nut and bolt and driven twice a year.I'd love to see people 'restoring' wheel arches with fibreglass, filler and badly matched rattle cans and roadside repairs carried out with elastic bands and twigs to get you home which are still in use 6 months later.Happy to contribute some shite if gets off the ground.
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How about denying the existence of MGBs, completely blank them, never heard of them, in if one parks on your foot you don't even acknowledge it and just wait for it to go kind of a way. MGB? No such thing mate. They're a myth, like dragons, unicorns, man made climate change, honest MPs etc.

Music to my ears, that.
Same here........ :)
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Something like a modern incarnation of Jalopy would be great, just not actually financially viable as an actual magazine.No MGB / E Type / Stag / Mk2 Jag content, more real people running real cars would be great. I like the idea of a blog style thing. Bolloxs tat thread is probably my favourite bit of RR so more of that sort of thing would be great.I'm currently trying to sort a new website out for our business and have been half thinking about putting some sort of blog on that.

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Now then...I'd like to see all the journos have to run & write about living with a 20+ year old car that costs an absolute maximum of £999 including MOT & tax. This would be called "the 3 figure rule".Next, I'd like to see lots of campaigning to up the pre-73 cut-off. When it started, this was for cars over 25 years old, restoring this as a 30 year rolling rule (in line with some european countries) would put us back to 1980, and mean in 3 years my Acclaim is tax free - woohoo!I'd like to see a section called "Impractically Classic" which would be about spending more than the value of a condition 1 car on keeping one going - first feature could be Austoshite hero China Tom throwing thousands of quid at a semi-shagged out 90's V12 jag.I'd also like to see stuff about driving old motors that is actually about driving them & bans words such as "surge", "burble" and "waft".

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I'd like to see all the journos have to run & write about living with a 20+ year old car that costs an absolute maximum of £999 including MOT & tax. This would be called "the 3 figure rule".

Sounds like you need to read Classic Car Weekly!

Next, I'd like to see lots of campaigning to up the pre-73 cut-off. When it started, this was for cars over 25 years old, restoring this as a 30 year rolling rule (in line with some european countries) would put us back to 1980, and mean in 3 years my Acclaim is tax free - woohoo!

I'd tread carefully here. I worry that we might well get rolling free tax again, but it'll come with restrictions on use or something like that - as already happens in other EU states. I don't mind paying road tax on my classics as I get unrestricted use of them - and I do a lot of miles.
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No MGB / E Type / Stag / Mk2 Jag content, more real people running real cars would be great. I like the idea of a blog style thing. Bolloxs tat thread is probably my favourite bit of RR so more of that sort of thing would be great.

Have to agree. I find this sort of stuff monumentally boring and it's been done so many times before.My favourite mags are EVO and Octane and although most of the stuff in EVO and a good deal of the stuff in Octane will forever be out of my pricerange, its different to what other mags do, it's well written and the cars are interesting and you never seem to see the same crap time and time again unless it's something which is universally loved like a 205 GTi which EVO tend to feature a lot.My main interests are 70's French and Italian cars and when I bother to have a read a PC in a newsagent there's usually very little in there for me. Sadly though the market has been spoon fed their MGB's, Stags, E-types etc etc and rather than broadening their tastes, that's what they want now :(
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Another thing I'd love would be more stuff on competition cars and homologation specials. Last months EVO did a piece on the Mitsubishi Galant VR4 and the Subaru Legacy Turbo/RS and compared them to their modern counterparts. My wifes car was almost featured but a nicer white one got chosen in the end. I'd love to see an article where they get something like a 131 Mirafiori and compare it to a 131 Abarth and show you the differences like the IRS on the Abarth and show you a replica as well perhaps. When I pick Practical Classics up they just don't seem to have much competition stuff and if they do it's almost always British cars :(

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My favourite mags are EVO and Octane and although most of the stuff in EVO and a good deal of the stuff in Octane will forever be out of my pricerange, its different to what other mags do, it's well written and the cars are interesting and you never seem to see the same crap time and time again..

I have to agree about Octane. It's a bloody good read.
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whose going to pay our print costs cos we all know its the mind numbing advertisements of County Gents and Chavs selling immensely over valued shite..this is what keeps PC in print..so i suggest we were more like Private Eye and go on a donation -subscription only management print policy..and my photographer fees would put the average profi version out of business..

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My favourite mags are EVO and Octane and although most of the stuff in EVO and a good deal of the stuff in Octane will forever be out of my pricerange, its different to what other mags do, it's well written and the cars are interesting and you never seem to see the same crap time and time again..

I have to agree about Octane. It's a bloody good read.
Yeah, my dad was over from Australia over Christmas and spent most of his time reading my collection and really liked them. He used to buy Practical Classics and Classic and Sports Car back in the 90's but I think he just got bored of them. Practical Classics seem to almost go to extremes to ignore Italian and French cars most of the time as well which IMHO is unforgivable as I feel the Frenchies were turning out better quality cars at that time which you could still use as daily drivers today. Back in Australia you still regularly see things like 404's, 504's and 70's Renno's being driven around as daily drivers and not just by people who want to be cool or part of a scene. I don't want to read about cars which were so piss-poor when they came out that you couldn't drive it everyday unless you modified it, I want to read about cars which were class leading back in the day, not stuff which was being churned out (BADLY) by hateful striking communist twats.I do like a good rant :D
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and they need to complain like hell about the "historic" status getting frozen at 1972.My 604 is 35 years old and there are hardly any left for goodness sake!and there's an election coming uphow many classic car fans are there in the UK? if the outcome is tight are there enough of us to make a difference?The current mags are just not doing enough about this

Tories said they would return this to how it was, so it moves forward every year. Mind you this was when they were run by Ian Duncan-Smith, and would have promised anything to get some votes.
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Can't see any party reversing the rolling tax tbh at the moment. And I'd agree with 'wobbler - I'd rather pay for my road tax and be able to use my car whenever etc rather than have free road tax but a historic status restricting use in some way.

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Can't see any party reversing the rolling tax tbh at the moment. And I'd agree with 'wobbler - I'd rather pay for my road tax and be able to use my car whenever etc rather than have free road tax but a historic status restricting use in some way.

Doubt it would lose them much tax money to be fair though.
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Aye but it'd knock spots off all the main party's spurious 'green' agendas.

True :D Because it's so much more environmentally friendly to make a whole new car than repair small faults on an otherwise perfectly good older car. I'm a big fat hypocrite for scrapping a 406 to buy my 500 but at least I don't pretend that it was the environmentally friendly thing to do as some people do. I was in London a few months ago for my nephews christening and got a lift back to my brothers place in a Prius owned by some people my sister in law knows. The amount of smug being emitted by the elderly owner was horrendous and when we stopped off at their house to pick something up they had a Civic hybrid thing too. Effing pointless waste of time IMHO and more harmful to the environment than keeping an old car going OR just buying a smaller new car.
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/\/\/\ To be fair, part of that air of smugness could have been from the avoidance of paying the congestion charge. It's an inferior level of smugness to what I'd feel if I needed to avoid paying said charge and had LPG'd an old shiter.

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/\/\/\ To be fair, part of that air of smugness could have been from the avoidance of paying the congestion charge. It's an inferior level of smugness to what I'd feel if I needed to avoid paying said charge and had LPG'd an old shiter.

I guess. Lot of money to pay to avoid the CC!
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And I'd agree with 'wobbler - I'd rather pay for my road tax and be able to use my car whenever etc rather than have free road tax but a historic status restricting use in some way.

How would they be able to police something like that anyway.
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Historic plates on your car. They make 'em stand out. I believe France and Austria and Australia already have such restrictions.

but how would they know how much youve used it though, you could have just done a few miles a week.
Well in Australia on a concessional licence you can pretty much only take your car out for club meetings etc etc :)
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