Pour One Out For Road & Track
It’s the end of an era, as perhaps the best of the remaining American color car rags moves from Newport Beach to Ann Arbor. As the slightly snobby California counterpart to Motor Trend‘s unhappy mediocrity and Car and Driver’s wild swings between brilliance and boorishness, Road & Track has always provided pleasant, well-illustrated automotive content with a motorsports focus. No doubt part of that was due to the magazine’s distance from the Detroit manufacturers and its proximity to West Coast racetracks and the car-club culture.
No longer. Hearst Corporation is choosing to geographically merge R&T with C/D, and just in case there’s someone out there who isn’t getting the memo about what’s expected, they’re changing leadership as well.
According to the Hearst press release, former C/D editor Larry Webster will be calling the shots are the newly relocated magazine. Mr. Webster’s resume includes several impressive results in manufacturer-funded race appearances as well as a variety of legitimately interesting columns and features over his career. He is a legitimate “car guy”, not a “lifestyle guy” or a marketroid who endlessly bounces between both sides of the PR/journo buffet table.
Even with Mr. Webster’s legitimate qualifications taken into account, it’s hard to see this as anything other than the same sort of broken thinking that has over-promoted the current leadership at the other American magazines. Combine that with a move back into the sordid orbits of the PR machine, and it’s easy to conclude that Hearst is simply preparing everyone for the inevitable merger of their two automotive properties.
I will miss the old R&T. There was always a quiet dignity to their leafy photography and painstaking specification sheets. Let’s hope Mr. Webster makes this slide into oblivion as painless as possible.
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- ToolGuy 9 miles a day for 20 years. You didn't drive it, why should I? 😉
- Brian Uchida Laguna Seca, corkscrew, (drying track off in rental car prior to Superbike test session), at speed - turn 9 big Willow Springs racing a motorcycle,- at greater speed (but riding shotgun) - The Carrousel at Sears Point in a 1981 PA9 Osella 2 litre FIA racer with Eddie Lawson at the wheel! (apologies for not being brief!)
- Mister It wasn't helped any by the horrible fuel economy for what it was... something like 22mpg city, iirc.
- Lorenzo I shop for all-season tires that have good wet and dry pavement grip and use them year-round. Nothing works on black ice, and I stopped driving in snow long ago - I'll wait until the streets and highways are plowed, when all-seasons are good enough. After all, I don't live in Canada or deep in the snow zone.
- FormerFF I’m in Atlanta. The summers go on in April and come off in October. I have a Cayman that stays on summer tires year round and gets driven on winter days when the temperature gets above 45 F and it’s dry, which is usually at least once a week.
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Someone give Jack a car to drive and write about. This is getting ridiculous. How long has it been? Was the rental Corolla really the last one? Am I forgetting a car?
I think R&T is currently the worst of the mags - all their new car previews & reviews read like press releases with no opinion or commentary to be found. The big comparos are good, but I only skim R&T vs. reading all the other mags.