Nick
Posted a lot
Posts: 2,483
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i thought the Etype was pretty cool apart from crappy arches and wheel choice, 400bhp v12 etype with rollcage.. don't see what there is to complain about its not like they featured a gayingly curse word polish or die showcar
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idea stolen from rattely eddie.
this weeks car count "5"
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RWNick : Its not the fact they featured an E-type, although it does drift somewhat away from the established style of the magazine (I wasn't hugely happy about the Austin Healy 3000s featured last year). Its the fact that it was in an issue with a whole bunch of cars that could have been featured in ANY of the classic car mags. Besides, of all the well modified and interesting E-types out there, why pick that one, with its bubble arches and crappy wheels. The Rob Beere Racing/Malcolm Hamilton E-type with 7.3 litre engine, producing 680 bhp and it looks awesome :  I don't think it comes down to advertising pressure either, adverts in magazines = good thing, magazines keep going and small companies have a place to tell you about what they do. I hate to say it again, but, when Simon was at the helm of the magazine it seemed to cope with advertising pressure whilst still covering a properly diverse range of interesting cars. The change of publisher won't have affected the direction of the magazine that quickly..... |
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This months Miniworld was labelled as 144 pages, collectors edition ..... Collectors of brochures maybe, over half the mag was a brochure for Minispares  |
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Out of sheer boredom last week I bought a copy of "Classic & Sportscar". Content? What content?? A nice bit about DS's, some waffle about elans and a bit about the M3 evo e30 (why I got it).... and about 300 pages of adverts for massively overpriced toys for rich tw@ts. Utter sh!te. Also bought " Classics Monthly". Terrible recycled drivel. Cured my insomnia at least. And the article about some coffin-dodger who'd spazzed £23,000 on a Wolseley 16/60 cheered me up a bit. What a numpty. Retro Cars has a long way to fall before it reaches the pits of either of these mags, which are about as bi-polar as you can get in terms of old motors, and yet both fail to satisfy... |
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Last Edit: May 9, 2005 8:59:39 GMT by nickb
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richy
Posted a lot
Flatheads forever....
Posts: 1,764
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Nick - couldn't put the lines about Classics better meself!
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filmidget
East Midlands
Mostly Lurking
Posts: 1,652
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So far the internet, and particularly Forums, have reduced my magazine buying from bank account emptying levels to vitually nothing (CCC, kit car mags, classic mags, Autotrader, etc)
Who needs mags when I can spend a happy hour reading the Readers Rides section? (going wireless at home too, so will be able to read in the traditional mag reading place - and no I don't mean WH Smith)
If you don't like the direction the mag is taking, don't buy it - if you are feeling charitable, write to them first with comments/suggestions.
Then write a readers ride, or even better get out in the garage and create something worth writing about?
Cheers, Phil
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'79 MG Midget 1500 - Still patiently awaiting attention
'02 Vauxhall Astra 1.8 Elegance(!) - Better than you might think
'03 Mazda MX5 - All new and shiny looking (thanks to Antony at Rust Republic)
'09 Renault Clio - Needs to go.
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I thought this month was a good one...a Datsun and a Toyota!
Surely without the MGBs included they'd cut their readership/advertisers in half?
The Moggy didn't strike me as particularly feature worthy...there must be hundreds of better modded Minors out there.
In all, a good mag and still worth buying.
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I recall 'popular classics' and 'Your classic' in particular being fairly interesting to read. But again they mixed the good and evil - keeping that delicate balance cannot please everyone. I doubt whether that a retro car magazine full of modded Simca 1000's, Mazda 616's and Skoda 105's will attract as many readers as the 'mass market appeal' classic cars. I still feel Retro car magazine is still the best of a conservative bunch of classic car mags though. Maybe we should subscribe in French, Ozzie or German classic mags instead? Jalopy was tops. The only magazine I genuinely anticipated. Asides from dishwater weekly of course.....  |
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Kris
Posted a lot
Posts: 1,631
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I think RC is great, I know it is full of adverts but it has to be to make it viable and they can be very useful at times. They have to feature some of the "mainstream" classics in order to satisfy their reader base, remember that we do have some very obscure tastes on here! Some people may not agree with some of the "10 of the best" or the features but its what keeps us talking. Imagine if we all agreed on everything...Zzzzz. Had a look at Classics and Classics Monthly today, now they are bull5hit, free stickers, come off it!!! |
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Maybe we should relaunch Jalopy and Slowcar. It was great. Printed on cheap paper, never sure when it would come out and great fun.
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BS Nymph
Singer Chamois Coupe
Series 3 Landy
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Ken
Part of things
Posts: 147
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(going wireless at home too, so will be able to read in the traditional mag reading place Be careful where you rest your laptop mate, there have been cases of men no longer able to produce offspring due to the heat from the underside of laptops! |
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Saab Freak (in order of favouite first) '88 900 Turbo8 '86 900i Old Stripy '72 99 CM4 '83 99 '06 9-5 Aero 260 '96 9000 Turbo CSE '93 900 LPT SE (absolute Shed of a car) www.uksaabs.co.uk |
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I like Classic and Sportscar, most of the stuff’s out of my price range but they feature some great left-field stuff. Recently I have seen Austin Kimberleys, 70’s Celica/260Z/something else shootout, a feature on the isuzu 118 coupe, a middle-school technology teacher restoring his Lancia Aurelia or Flaminia zagato in amongst one-off prototype Lamborghinis etc. Ace. Also that Buckley lad writes for them and I’ll read anything he writes, I almost had an accident at his proposal of a photo-book of ‘places where great cars used to be parked’, what an idea! I think it’s a great mag, a really good mix of all sorts of stuff.
‘Classics’ however is absolutely the worst token bum-rag I have ever seen. Completely inane, 100% unoriginal and utter pap.
I’ll tell you what though, even classics is a bible of vital information compared to ‘Kit Cars’ magazine, does anyone on here ever read these mags? I think there are 2 uk-based kit car magazines and they are both absolutely dreadful, containing NOTHING apart from:
1) Utterly dull information about what fasteners to use for fitting carpets.
2) Serialisation of recent books on kit cars (these can occupy up to 1/3 of the magazine).
3) Half-arsed, snide and boring editorials sniping at the other kit car magazine.
4) Pages and pages of adverts for lots of different, obscure kit cars (almost all with the same address for their premises).
If you are lucky you might find one interesting test per issue. My mate who is into kit cars had a big pile of them which I started reading but soon stopped as they were SH1TE.
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1972 Fiat 130 1985 Talbot Alpine 1974 Lancia Beta Saloon 1975 + 1986 Mazda 929 Koop + Wagon 1982 Fiat Argenta 2.0 iniezione elettronica 1977 Toyota Carina TA14 BEST CAR EVER!!!!!!!! 1979 Datsun B310 Sunny 4-dr 1984 Audi 200 Quattro Turbo 1983 Honda Accord 1.6 DX GONE1989 Alfa 75 2.0 TS Mr T says: TREAT YO MOTHER RIGHT! |
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filmidget
East Midlands
Mostly Lurking
Posts: 1,652
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We have 14 month old twins - at the moment the excess heat thing I am regarding as an added bonus!  BTW my earlier comment was aimed at editorial content, not the percentage of adverts. |
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'79 MG Midget 1500 - Still patiently awaiting attention
'02 Vauxhall Astra 1.8 Elegance(!) - Better than you might think
'03 Mazda MX5 - All new and shiny looking (thanks to Antony at Rust Republic)
'09 Renault Clio - Needs to go.
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Laptops don't nuke your love spuds.
It is a urban legend born out of anews story from about 18 months ago about a man who had his laptop on his knee, the battery had a catastrophic (and EXTREMELY rare) failure and burned his thighs and willy. Nothing terminal, everything still 'worked'.
*n
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Top grammar tips!
Bought = purchased. Brought = relocated
Lose = misplace/opposite of win. Loose = your mum
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I like Classic and Sportscar, most of the stuff’s out of my price range but they feature some great left-field stuff. Yup, exactly how I feel about the magazine, has some really interesting stuff... Everything is treated equally, with enthusiasm, like we do on here (mostly). Whats more its all very well written! |
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As I said its the best RC for a while,.. but I think its still a bit lacklustre, particularly compared to the earlier issues. Just seems to have lost a lot of attitude.
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impmann
Posted a lot
Overcoming stupidity is the greatest challenge left to mankind
Posts: 1,089
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I loved the comment about the dullard Wolseley in Crassics Munflee... £23k on that thing? He could have bought 10 minters for that much... with enough change left over for a new flat cap, pair of carpet slippers and a pint of Mild.
What drivel.
Stickers? What the frap am I going to stick them to? "My car's not as rough as my missus" - my wife, who is a true petrol head, thought that was slightly offensive. Perhaps someone should tell them that 1) they are curse word 2) those badges are trademarks of BMW 3) they are curse word 4) no-one is going to stick them to their dullard wagon 5) they are curse word
Oh did I mention they are curse word?
Hmmmm.
Bring back Jalopy - my fave mag of all time!
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1964 Hillman Imp
1976 Hillman Imp
1967 Hillman Imp
(And a few projects dotted around the country)
Just cos something is good for you doesn't mean its good for everyone - for example Marmite does not make good Dog Food.
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My last couple of posts didn't come out the way they really should have, I wasn't really getting at a few pages of adverts in magazines, after all they can actually be useful if you're looking for something, and it's only really when they start taking up ridiculous amounts of space that they're not a good thing, what really annoys me is the whole idea of the features themselves becoming like adverts, i.e. featuring almost entirely cars that were restored by big companies so that they can get big money from them, restoration/modifying/buyers guides that are basically nothing but saying 'Buy from So-and-so', or modifying guides that, rather than giving practical advice to readers who might own an example of that particular car, or engine, or whatever, and might be considering uprating it, and could do with a little advice, they basically give you the phone number of a leading specialist who will be glad to give you the ready uprated engine for a few grand, but no advice whatsoever for someone who doesn't actually have the money to buy a full race engine, but was wanting to know what kind of carbs etc to fit for his own engine to give him a little added performance on a reasonable budget. I read these modifying guides and get the impression that the only way to make certain classics run the way you want them is to hand them over to a specialist, along with your entire bank account and a couple of credit cards. That's alright if you want the ultimate spec in that car or if you're not really into modifying classics and just want a very fast MGB or similar, but I like working on cars, and I don't have an endless budget, but can't seem to get any practical advice from these guides. I understand that a certain degree of this is necessary to the running of the magazine, but is it really necessary to the degree it's done these days, surely if Retro Cars could be geared towards its readers in the beginning and still afford to stay affloat it doesn't need to go the way of Practical Classics, Classics etc now?
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"He's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy!"
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I've just got the new rc, i think is a great selection of cars as usual especially the Datsun and the Fiat. Oh and not forgeting the V6 Micra in readers rides   Sorry mate but that Micra looked god awful. No doubt it'll be pretty quick once its going though. |
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