There are many forum threads dedicated to free magazine subscription offers. I follow this one, but you might also check sites such as fatwallet and slickdeals. Note, the offers usually expire within two weeks or less.

I still like ams, but the Italian Quattroruote beats it for technical graphs, explanations, and data.

Evo is great, Car used to be great. What I like about both magazines, is, that my girlfriend – who is not the least bit interested in cars – can still be entertained by reading the articles and the pics.

This is the problem with Octane: the featured cars and images are great, but the layout is b-o-r-i-n-g, misses any non literal artistic communication, enthusiasm, and the writing is ok at best, very, very, predictable.

Top Gear magazine is not the best one in the WORLD.

Road&Track, Car and Driver: Used to read them as a teenager. They are orders of magnitude too close to Consumer Report compared to Car and the like. Just watch the TV shows they produce: Yawn!

My ultimate car magazine? The writing and visuals from Car and Evo, technical graphs and discussions from Quattroruote, discussions from Auto&Design, clever appreciation of each car’s strengths from Automobiles Classiques. Oh, and I spent all my teenage pocket money on the latter two, by the way.

I also subscribe to Autocar, which has some very good writing as well, and is more up to date – given the weekly format.

On the subject of AMS my opinion is deeply divided. I used to love it as a kid and have been subscribed for a very long time. Back in the day I also prefered it to English publications for exactly the reasons mentioned – it seemed much more scientific and in the pre-driving days I could not fully grasp the difference in the description of how the cars felt like to drive.

When I started driving myself and living in the UK, my opinion changed. I really started enjoying Car, Autocar and Performance Car (predecessor to Evo). Top Gear, not so much that came later for me.

Looking at it from that perspective AMS slowly started to look a lot less appealing. In the old days I would simply assume that plenty of data equalled reliable results. And that German cars were so much better at everything that thywould have to win every test, which at AMS at tha time they inevitably did. There were clear favourites when it came to manufacturers as well. Reading more magazines made me appreciate how contrived the conclusions and justifications for AMS results sometimes were.

Nowadays I only read AMS on the occasional trip to Germany and often just skip through large sections. The data is still good but I just cannot bring myself to really trust any of the conclusions, plus the quality of writing in the English seaking mags is just so much better.

Octane has me completely divided – I enjoy some of the topics but feel the writing is not up to scratch on average ad that it doesn’t justify a subscription.

Overall internet has not really in any way changed the number of car mags that I read or the fact that I read them at all. I get the up to date news online, then read the car mags on the train to and from work.

The British mags are fun, but their version of English is hard to read (I have less trouble with Chaucer), and they seem to have curious disinclination towards publishing some basic stats about the cars they discuss, like length and weight.

Length only matters when you’re parking the car. The European magazines publish weight in kilograms.

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I’m an avid reader of EVO, and enjoy the odd AutoCar and CAR issue… Driver’s Republic (online only) is also fun, being made up of ex-EVO and ex-Autocar staffers.

I pick up MOTOR (Australian) whenever I can find it… Nice magazine, too.

I think the appeal of magazines like EVO is the fact that they concentrate less on the mundanities that most automotive reviews need to touch on (due to their demographics, five paragraphs on cupholders and stereo are a must for any regular magazine) and focus solely on the driving experience… which, to be honest, is all you really care about as an enthusiast.

http://pagesperso-orange.fr/jpdesvauxlavandou/magazine.htm

Nothing else is even a close second, IMO.

Oh, and I’m a subscriber – I don’t mind paying for the quality.

I’ve always loved CAR.

I’m also a fan of Grassroots Motorsports.
I’ll pick up the odd issue of Top Gear, CAR etc. depending on content and how much time I’m spending on airplanes that month.

Much like anything else, I find publications that find a niche, and do it well (EVO, Grassroots etc.) continue to do ok, but “generalist” publications that basically just give new car news and reviews don’t have a chance vs. free internet content.

My personal opinion is that print mags need to focus on good editorials, in-depth reviews, and comparisons that are not time-sensitive, and the blogoshpere does not cover. Just give up on car news and do content. The rags can’t survive otherwise.

Please enlighten me further on this, spyspeed.
The economy has killed all my discretionary spending…

Those mags are to american mags as Stanford is to University of Florida.

The bad thing is that some issues make you wish you hadn’t bothered. My retinas are still scarred from having caught a glimpse of Dutch Mandel in camo gear in a photo accompanying a narcissistic blurb about his humanitarian mission to Iraq.

Note to Dutch: It’s about the cars, stupid!

Twotone

Most people don’t have enough time to check out every auto website’s content and may miss some real great writing or photography. A medium that could put that all in my hands every month would be pretty cool, as long as it’s timely (June content could be mailed out first couple weeks of July with some effort).

This could be a real bonus for websites, too. They could some of their content out to more people and reference them back to the website for more.

I’m starting to wish I had the capital to get this rolling, or at least investigate the idea further.

I’ve also noticed the lack of quality motorcycle magazines in the U.S. as well.