Are Car Magazines Dying? (a video!)

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

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

Colin

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.

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.

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!

**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)

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

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.

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.