story ideas

Someone said to start a tread about ideas for the magazine. How about some very wacky out really out in left field ideas for articals.

Lawn mower racing, and they call they call them selfs grassroots motor sports........you can not get more grassroots then racing on grass.

The weridness of english banger racing which just seems really weird and could be fun to see in the zine.

Aussie jet boat racing would be very kick butt to see whatbits like.

How come they never sent anyone to naples florida to cover the mile of mud which is in grms back yard. It would great to see something on them.

I know a lot of us think its nuts, but how about something on the local dirt track on a sat night for racing? I can help with photos on this topic since I have been shooting on every sat night for the past month.

How about something on the racing of the dakar rally with the big racing trucks, not the off rad trucks, the big monster rigs that get run.

How something short on truck and tractor pulling or even garden tractor pulling.

How about something on what it takes to run baja 1000 or other shorter off road racing arpund the country or the short track off road racing.

How about an update on the state of demo derbys right now?

How about a artical listing different driving schools in different parts of the countyr or by state with a basic over veiw of the school..

Just some basic ideas that could great for a one or two page thing for someone who might want to check something out or meybe some ideas for over seas readers articals on racing around the world even could be verycoolmto read.

ckosacranoid wrote: Aussie jet boat racing would be very kick butt to see what it's like.

+1.

Aussie jet boat racing and Rally coverage were the best parts of the late SpeedVision.

I know that local dirt tracks are never talked about here, but I can't imagine anything more grassroots. They have classes to include just about anything, and most of the cars are made in home garages. I have seen some pretty darn impressive vehicles too! The trick is to run one on the street and see what she'll do!

I am a fan of the product test. Take a popular car like, oh I don't know, a Fiesta ST and set a lap time stock. Then upgrade the tires. Then add a sway bar. Then add a K&N filter. Put real-world numbers to popular upgrades. GRM used to do this, I'd love to see more.

I'd love to see a $2015 Challenge and a Pick-A-Part story combined. Go to a yard with $2015 and a bunch of tools and see what you can drive out with. A sympathetic yard could help with engine swaps and such, and if they let you use a welder, the options open way up.

Or what about a Pick-A-Part Challenge? Two teams have 2 hours to pull parts with a $50 budget, then sell them on E-Bay. The team with the largest profit margin wins. (Heck, that could be a show. I'd watch that!)

I am also waiting to see a talent versus upgrades comparison. Take two drivers in the same car, something cool and hip like a Fiesta ST, and set a lap time. Then take one to a driving school, and the other to the Ford Racing Catalog. One upgrades their car, the other their skills. Then set another lap time.

In a similar vein, you could run a novice in a race version of a car, against a pro in a street version of a car. Imagine stock Miata driven by a Spec-Miata driver against a Spec-Miata driven by a track newbie.

What about stories? As in entertaining multi-issue fantasy stories? Things that wouldn't teach anything, just be fun to read. From legally obtained chapter by chapter reprints of say The Red Car to specially written stories crafted from the minds of your writers or even fans? Imaginary road trips, epic fantasy races, etc.

I like the idea of a pick-a-challenge. Find two ideally similar yards. Get two teams. Build two cars. Race em!. Also derbies. Cause smashing things is always fun.

pit bike racing, so many roadcourses have karting centers now it's time for Saturday night bragging rights

It's time to grassroots a minivan.

In reply to Richard Nixon:

I can think of two different ideas with that.

Converting a people hauler into a parts/tools hauler, or turning one into a rally car or something. Dajiban a Caravan. Doooooo eeeeeet.

I would like to see an article or series looking at modifying the lesser brothers of performance cars. Regular Mazda3 (not Mazdaspeed), VW Rabbit/Golf (not GTI), Focus, Fiesta (not ST), Hyundai/Kias etc... Pick some 3-5 year old examples, throw on suspension, tires, intake, tune & exhaust see how they compare. I even have an article name for you 'Saner Siblings', knock yourself out.

How about a drive of the White Rim national park? It's not rock climbing, and a stock SUV with 4wd can manage it quite well. Could the project Subaru manage?

Have TSD rallies been covered?

A small piece on the emerging cars and coffee scene.

Karting?

rallycross TDI

also regarding the rallycross people hauler, you do realize that in 1981 Dodge actually campaigned the Ramcharger in WRC competition, note I said campaigned, not successfully campaigned.

When proposing potential stories for a magazine, it is important to consider the advertizing tie-in potential is important. If I am going to run a tire or shock absorber comparison story, then I will most certainly let the advertizing sales department know so that they can sell space to all the brands involved.

ckosacranoid wrote: Lawn mower racing

Title of the article should be "Grassroots Mowersports"

I'd like to 2nd all of Pichvalve's ideas. They are great.

I've got two ideas. First the magazine stories about certain makes of car. 10-15 years ago they used to be great. Now they read like fluff pieces. Go back and do them like the original 944, or the old 323 GTX versions. They were far more in-depth it felt to me.

The second isn't an idea for a magazine, it's for a one time, or occasional extra publication. Look at many of the UK mags like Evo or Motorsport. Every year or so they come out with a soft back book type magazine that's a compilation of articles, such a super car road tests or something. I think GRM and/or Classic Motorsport should do a one off 'Project car' publication. Gather all the blog postings you made on project cars which tend to be more in-depth than what you end up publishing in the magazine and make a glossy warts and all write up of several. I’ve sort of done this before for myself. I've gone and downloaded all of one of the project cars into a word document and added all the pictures. Then printed out double sided on 8 1/2 x 11 and taken on vacation as holiday reading. The tie in is there for your normal advertisers as you use many of their products in the build. Do one a year of say 200-250 pages but charge $15-20 for the issue. Or make them a perk for re-upping your subscription instead of a T shirt. The work has been done so it becomes a mega editing job rather than a research and writing job. I assume as such the production costs would be lower so you don’t need as much ad revenue as for the regular magazine issues, you would also offset costs with the higher cover price compared to whatever it is on the magazine these days (being a 10 year subscriber I have no idea and I don’t have one in front of me)

In reply to captdownshift:

I dunno, they won an African Safari race with em. Forget which year it was, but the two they entered did a 1-2 finish in the 4x4 class.

In reply to Grizz:

1981, 6 entered, 2 finished, program was killed after that, the program's inaugural race.

How about a badass offroad vehicle? Plenty of grassroots builds out there. I understand there are already magazines that cater to that, but I like GRM because it has a little bit of everything

In reply to coldaudio:

I think he's onto something, especially if it maintains the ability to tow a lightweight car and open trailer, maybe requiring a drop hitch. A dual propose moderately to very capable offroad and tow rig.

(note that "moderately" capable in my mind is able to do Rubicon and most trials around Moab without issue, highly capable near rock crawler capability in my mind)

Do an article on do-dads that you can get at a junkyard for cheap, that are near universal in use.

Example: those neat hose clamps that Mercedes have. Those things are like $3 new. You can probably get an arm full for $3 at a yard.

I very support the idea of a grm project car being a turbo smoking minivan of some type, cause it would a very epic build for them to do. Lots of neat ideas on here from everyone though. To bad about no comments from the powers that be though yet.