I sub to GRM and CM and Hot Rod until it runs out. I just kept renewing it because it was cheap and I have such fond memories of going on the Power Tour. Hot Rod has been going down hill for a long time and this new quarterly deal will be the end of the road for me. GRM in the mailbox day is still my favorite mail day of the month, even the wife and kids know it. The wife hands it to me and smiles and gives me this movie quote:
Kreb (Forum Supporter) said:A friend just gave me a pristine copy of Hot Rod from 1955. What a great read! And -although it was never intended that way, a historical/social record of the time.
I have a book that reprints the first 12 issues of 'Hop Up' magazine, which was a spin-off from Road and Track starting in August '51. https://www.abebooks.com/first-edition/Hop-First-12-Issues-Morton-Mark/30700100555/bd. Very cool read.
NY Nick said:I sub to GRM and CM and Hot Rod until it runs out. I just kept renewing it because it was cheap and I have such fond memories of going on the Power Tour. Hot Rod has been going down hill for a long time and this new quarterly deal will be the end of the road for me. GRM in the mailbox day is still my favorite mail day of the month, even the wife and kids know it. The wife hands it to me and smiles and gives me this movie quote:
My wife tosses that one around a lot too. Everytime someone mentions October.
Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) said:ddSatch was probably the #1 reason I started subscribing to Autoweek back in the late 80s. Loved his writing. Too bad he got himself mixed up in that... unfortunateness (He was also a HS teacher in Alaska and had an affair with one of his students).
What else are you supposed to do over those long winters?
RIP Hemmings Classic Car.
https://youtu.be/UZtdxvttsvs?si=Dm3IjJygpNHqt6vh
The continual loss of print media for enthusiasts makes me want to circle the wagons even closer around the GRM/CM family. It's brutal out there.
Thanks for the support, and those eyeballs definitely help us.
Not only car mags, looks like several guitar mags shut down recently as well with everything moving to their website.
The sad thing is, its not just the media, its the market. It has been a long slow march to SUVification. Most normies aren't buying sporty cars anymore. I don't think articles about how many cupholders the latest tahoe has would be very engaging. Without the volume of car-curious NPC drivers its hard to make a general interest car magazine make sense. Fortunately there are still weirdos like us at the fringe who try and keep this thing going.
^I just saw a train magazine loud and proud at the supermarket yesterday.
it feels like the overarching message here is that media—print media especially—is becoming either hyper generalized or hyper niche. I guess it's lucky for us we were hyper niche before it was cool and necessary, but it's tough watching colleagues have their jobs disappear out from under them.
I remember reading car magazines practically from cover to cover. There are lots of car enthusiasts out there. I would hope that people would understand the value of physical publications and subscribe even if they only got limited viewing. I subscribe to a number of publications that I only have marginal interest in, but believe that the world is better off for their existence.
People are going for quantity over quality. I bumped into a presumably AI-written piece yesterday that had rotary engines mixed up with traditional piston engines. The piece was utter BS, but it was written as if it were a Wikipedia piece. Bothered me two ways - one because someone who didn't know better could be terribly misinformed, and two - the piece has tons of hits telling the poster how screwed up the info is - which gives the poster the hits that he's looking for. Accuracy be damned, gotta trip that hit meter!
In reply to theruleslawyer :
"Most normies aren't buying sporty cars anymore.
Most normies aren't buying CARS anymore.
In reply to Kreb (Forum Supporter) :
It's not only print, look at Youtube or even FB ads, especially about F1. I've seen so much made up BS this year it's absolutely ridiculous. If you believe half of it Max is at Astin next year and Perez was replaced 5 times last year and another 6 times this year.
In reply to triumph7 :
And they claim Ralf Schumacher or Helmut Marko as a source.. My wife and I have both lamented that we end up scrutinizing any URL that claims something interesting in F1.
triumph7 said:In reply to Kreb (Forum Supporter) :
It's not only print, look at Youtube or even FB ads, especially about F1. I've seen so much made up BS this year it's absolutely ridiculous. If you believe half of it Max is at Astin next year and Perez was replaced 5 times last year and another 6 times this year.
Yeah, there seems to be a proliferation of bland, accuracy-challenged AI Utube content, often from a channel I've never seen before and voice that makes the HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey sound engaging.
GCrites said:^I just saw a train magazine loud and proud at the supermarket yesterday.
Dude, rail fans are as hardcore as it gets. Much more so than car guys and girls. Those will be the last surviving print mags.
A 401 CJ said:GCrites said:^I just saw a train magazine loud and proud at the supermarket yesterday.
Dude, rail fans are as hardcore as it gets. Much more so than car guys and girls. Those will be the last surviving print mags.
As someone who had a model railroad for years I can confirm this.
I lost interest in printed car magazines as the contents degraded into infomercials for the parts making up the project. Even shop equipment was suspiciously mentioned by both brand and model, making me wonder if the writers had sold out to advertisers, getting kickbacks, "donations", or discounts. Yes, I'm generalizing, but objectivity seemed to be disappearing, so, too, did my interest.
JG Pasterjak said:it feels like the overarching message here is that media—print media especially—is becoming either hyper generalized or hyper niche. I guess it's lucky for us we were hyper niche before it was cool and necessary, but it's tough watching colleagues have their jobs disappear out from under them.
I once toyed with being an automotive journalist. Had a few things published here and there as a freelancer. The income back then was so unpredictable I decided against it. A wise decision, it seems.
Substack is where the super niche publications are. The money isn't bad.
I miss print magazines in general. I only get a 30min lunch and nothing but McD's nearby, so I bring something and spend it reading. At one point I would have like 4-5 different mags in my desk. This one, Autoweek for awhile, R&T, something Star Wars related, I even had a membership to AARP for a bit. And Meijer used to have a decent magazine rack to pick from (that's how I found GRM).
Now I'm down to this, and the PRI magazine that has about 5-10% related to me but it's better than zero. Looking at Meijer and they moved the magazines/books to a back corner that's badly lit like a cheap horror movie. For what they even carry, last time I bothered it was guns and some entertainment stuff.
Sigh. "Back in my day..."
A 401 CJ said:GCrites said:^I just saw a train magazine loud and proud at the supermarket yesterday.
Dude, rail fans are as hardcore as it gets. Much more so than car guys and girls. Those will be the last surviving print mags.
Dirt bike magazines seem to still be going strong based on a quick glance at the magazine rack of my local supermarket. Motorcross Action and Dirt Bike are still pretty thick.
I get train magazines - old people like physical media. But dirt bikes? Also old people these days? Hmm...maybe. I've run into a small group of guys on barely-streetable dual sports at a local WaWa a couple times. All of them had to be in their 50s. They were pretty cagey about where they were headed. There's no legal spot to ride off road in that area that I'm aware of and they were all fully kitted in off-road gear.
Dirt bike folk never really found those one or two big online places to gather until a couple years ago. And even those aren't really that big. And the discussion is often too shallow. Nobody exclusively online has the resources and access to data that Dirt Bike and MXA do. Everyone else is just working out of their garage and not organized like the magazines are. And people really good on dirt bikes aren't usually good or prolific writers. Maybe when they're older.
In reply to mfennell :
The magazine rack at the local Micro Center is full of gaming and computer tech-y magazines. It's not old people reading about the latest FPS.
Also, they carry GRM.
Sort of related: I hear that new cover stock for Classic Motorsports feels very, very nice. (Mine hasn’t yet landed.)
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