Are Car Magazines Dying? (a video!)

[HoTWire]

I did one of those talky videos again



What are your thoughts?

[sonus]

Couldn't agree more. I used to subscribe to PPC but even that became too little in depth, and that is probably the most techy mag out there (?).

Here in Norway mags are £10-12 each and I'd happily pay twice that for a really good in depth quarterly mag that delved deep into stuff. For example I got thinking while watching your video about really indepth article about Singer Porsches. I'll never afford one, but to really dive in to one to show what goes into them down to how they do paint, upholstery, machining, engine building etc would be impossible to find online is something that would make me buy a magazine again.

[Mercdan68]

Very interesting, I've bought practical classics since I was 13 and still do, all the others I've tried could never match it
They've moved with the times in my opinion
And it's events write ups are always good
I do buy the weekly papers ccw and classic car buyer

[penski]

Good piece.

Personally, I haven't bought a magazine in years other than the Classic Ford with Dbizzle and CFrizzle's bit on my Grandad's Twin Cam Escort featured in it. Interestingly it said the owner painstakingly restored it when he actually just ringed the vin plates onto another shell that wasn't banjaxed.

Also, you pronounce Imgur the same way I do; this is a good thing:



*n

[colnerov]

Mar 10, 2017 18:13:30 GMT penski said:

Good piece.

Personally, I haven't bought a magazine in years other than the Classic Ford with Dbizzle and CFrizzle's bit on my Grandad's Twin Cam Escort featured in it. Interestingly it said the owner painstakingly restored it when he actually just ringed the vin plates onto another shell that wasn't banjaxed.

Also, you pronounce Imgur the same way I do; this is a good thing:



*n

Hi, Yeah you don't really want things like that printed in magazines or on open forums on the web...oh wait.

Colin

[ian65]

I used to buy loads of classic car magazines but with internet forums etc, info, build threads etc are always available.
I only now buy car mags these days to take on holiday and read by the pool or if there is a feature on a model of classic I own that I want to read.
Practical Classics is still a very good classics magazine, they lost their way a bit about 10 yrs back but have since got back on top their game.

[skoda_norman]

Fantastic video. I wouldn't normally watch a 15 minute video of someone talking but that was really interesting; particularly as someone who is a serial subscriber to magazines and Editor of a car Club magazine in the face of growing online competition.

I do think there is still a market for magazines - but I think it has to be good quality, and specialist. I would cite EVO here - I absolutely love their magazines because the writing and photos are second to none and they get really good scoops and have a great take on things. Without doubt, my favourite magazine.

I feel that another reason where magazines have an advantage is they can summarise what is online. As you say, anyone can get live updates on a car build for example, but a magazine feature when the car is done, which details the whole build is ideal; and saves you sending hours reading threads online. I think that is an avenue which isn't fully exploited.

Do you have any thoughts on the recent launch of DriveTribe as that appears to have hit magazines hard with a lot of journos moving over there - I've seen less content on YouTube from my favourite magazines / journos as a result.

Ultimately though, I feel that paper based outlets will always have a market because we spend so long looking at screens and phones that actually, it is really enjoyable to have the reader / magazine interface with which you can sit down on the sofa and immerse yourself in a world away from Facebook, etc. That too is the niche market that magazines needs to sell themselves on. I am not sure that articles written to a price and shared across platforms and outlets (which you alluded to) is the right way to go.

[skoda_norman]

Mar 10, 2017 17:59:22 GMT Mercdan68 said:

Very interesting, I've bought practical classics since I was 13 and still do, all the others I've tried could never match it
They've moved with the times in my opinion
And it's events write ups are always good
I do buy the weekly papers ccw and classic car buyer

Agreed. Practical Classics have grasped I think, that what the readers want are the nutty stories and contributors who have strange fetishes for curse word BL cars and Eastern Bloc stuff. They seem to tread the line quite carefully between that demand and the demand set upon them by their advertisers.

[bababoom]

I used to buy Retro cars and PPC, the thing that put me off buying them in the end was as they got more popular the price would go up and the amount of adverts to.
Don't mind paying for a good mag but curse word me off paying and having adverts every second page.

[nomad]

Information overload is easily achived by just browsing the web - the only time I buy magazines is when I'm going on a trip (I'm away to stay with folk in Scandanavia in June, magazines there are £10+ each so I always take a few over to leave with them).

[s1105117]

Another tick here for practical classics, it has a very good balance of info and interesting stories. Plus as said PC diesbhave some people who do like odd bits of tin. Ibused to read ccw a bit, jowever i found it a bit disinteresting bar odd snipets and too advert oriented. A PC subscription has been my xmas pressent from SWMBO for the past three years, why change success hey! 😊

Tbf one copy of PC probabaly saved a lot of my sanity during a fortnight in Poland seeing the in-laws... though i probably know the articla about Jon Culshaw and his Granada better than the person who wrote it!

[lordyoung1980]

I used to buy ppc mag but got fed up of them buying loads of projects and never finishing them. I used to buy Land Rover owner international but soon learned it repeats itself every 3-4 years. I only buy mags if a particular article or car interests me. FUEL magazine from Australia is good but again not all the cars or articles interest me. But it's well written and virtually no adverts.

[WheelsonCanvas]

**Boring, long story alert** When I was a lot younger, I worked at a printers as a graphic designer. We had a newsagent just over the road from us and pretty much every lunchtime a friend and I would nip over to buy some reading material. Then I met my missus, bought a house and had a daughter, and all of a sudden I couldn't afford 80 quids' worth of mags a month. I narrowed my purchases down to two mags a month (CC and Classic American), one of which I bought over the counter and one that I had on subscription. I stopped buying CC from Sainsburys when supply became hit-and-miss a year ago. Last month, I cancelled my Classic American subscription.

So I've gone from 15-20 mags a month to nowt. The reasons? The accessibility of the interweb of course, and the fact that I haven't got the money to spend on them. I should imagine a lot of people are in the same boat. So dwindling revenues mean less budget for content/high end photo shoots, quality suffers, less people buy. Canny vicious circle that like.

So, back to the start - I worked at a printers for a long time and now work in an agency, and I can draw parallels between the print business and magazine publishing. Over the last 20 years I've seen the ar5e fall out of the litho print market as online matter became more accessible, and also when digital print became much more accessible. We get next-to-no litho jobs produced now, and a lot of companies, including my old overlords, have gone down the toilet. There'll come a time, not too far down the road, where specialist mags will be app-only and the shelves at Smiths will only contain Hello! if you're lucky (or unlucky)

[düdo]

Yeah, good video. Very interesting.

Car magazines must continue otherwise they'll be nothing to read when I go to the dentist ( once a year)! I was reading Practical Classics when I was a teenager and first getting into spanners but that was it.

When we were touring Aus three years ago I enjoyed reading '4WD Action' which bizarrely often seemed to be in launderettes - another dying industry? I don't know if anyone here has read 4WD Action but it used to feature a grizzled old timer called 'Roothy' who bodged his knackered old 40 series Landcruiser - Milo - together with whatever he could find to keep it going. The opposite of what the magazine seemed to be about really - a big advert/product placement fest - got to get the revenues from somewhere.

With Retro Rides we're all in the magazine - that's how it feels to me.

[Danny]

In the world of Vauxhall id say yes, not seen a vx mag for ages 

[fad]

A long time ago I used to subscribe to Volksworld but cancelled when every single issue was a feature on a slammed narrowed cal looker or a splitty. I don't even glance at car mags on the shelf now. My father in law gave me a Hayburner mag at xmas. Freebie mag, pays for its self with advert revenue so its packed full of ads as you would expect. But I found myself treating the articles like I do the web. "Skim skip skim oh that pic got my attention what have they done there? Skip skim skim..." I do the same with readers rides threads... skip to the bits I wanna know about. Certainly I skip past other folks comments cos they arent meant for me they are usually meant for the op.

I dunno... mags seem to just not hold my interest these days.

[b3nson]

I subscribe to Hayburner as it's free, and has some interesting stuff in despite being VW focussed and me not owning one.
I do currently love Modern Classics magazine, seems to alway have articles/cars that I'm interested in, writing quality could be a bit better in places but overall a very enjoyable read.

[vitesseefi]

Used to get Motorsport, Classic & Sportscar (subscribed), Practical Classics quite frequently, CCC quite frequently, PPC (subscribed for several years).

Haven't bought any for years. Two main reasons

1. Began to get far too much deja vu and after many years of reading from many sources and tinkering myself, was quite often finding that I knew more about the subject than the writer.

2. Discovered the internet and forums.

There is a third reason and that is as a very quick reader (both blessing and curse) they don't last very long and (unless bought on subscription) cost nearly as much as a much longer lasting full scale book, so I now don't even tend to buy them when travelling (air, train, boat).

I had huge numbers of back issues, complete year sets for C & S and PPC stashed and we we moved a few years ago I tried all kinds of ways to sell them or even give them away an can find no one interested. Took two big car loads to the paper bank. It made me sad.....

Nick

[stealthstylz]

I haven't bought a magazine for years. I flick through the odd one at the supermarket and I can read the bits I find vaguely interesting in 5 minutes. I'm not sure what would make me change. A lot seem to focus on how the car makes the owner feel which I couldn't care less about. I don't mind reading about the back story as to how it came about but when people put their love of cars into writing it just makes me realise how daft a life it is.

[ratchart]

I used to buy loads of magazines, probably one per week. Then, more recently I reduced it down to a Custom Car subscription and the very occasional other if something really interesting caught my eye. At the end of last year I cancelled my CC subscription. The simple reason was I thought there were better things to spend the money on. I don't have much problem with the content of the mag but I could read it cover to cover in an hour, then put it with the dozens other magazines in the bottom of my wardrobe. If I could be bothered to total up all the cash I've spent I could probably have bought a car with the money!

I find the posh, glossy classic car mags, like Classic & Sportscar and Octane, quite nice for the odd treat but they have so much advertising.