My August issue of Road & Track showed up in the mailbox three days ago and I read it cover to cover in about three hours. Highlights included a cover story on the battle between a Mercedes CLK63 AMG Black Series and a Lotus Exige S. Also inside was a faceoff between the Infiniti G37S and a BMW 335i. The pricey Bentley Continental GT managed to carve out a page somewhere near the center fold.
So what’s all of this have to do with anything? Yesterday my August issue of Motor Trend hit the front door and on the cover was the same faceoff between the G37S and 335i. Different writer. Different report. Same subject. Open the magazine and you’ll also find an article on the exact same CLK63 AMG Black Series. Turn a few more pages and there’s an article on a $400,000 Rolls Royce. For someone like myself on a fixed income, I don’t go out of my way to differentiate Bentley from Rolls Royce. Both clientèles wear ascots and drink $500 bottles of wine. Could there be any more duplicity inside Road &Track and Motor Trend? I also subscribe to Car And Driver and the same problem exists.
I can’t say for sure which magazine copied the other, but at least one of them is getting a subscription cancellation letter in the mail. What makes this even more inexcusable is both rags are published by completely different groups –Hachette Filipacchi in the case of R&T and Primedia in MT’s corner. All I know is I want my money back.
And now for a confession. I used to subscribe to both ‘zines a number of years ago and canceled both for many of the same reasons I just described. Each publication enjoyed a renaissance of late and performed a design makeover both inside and out. Naively, I figured, the content must have been re-worked too, so I re-subscribed expecting fresh improvements. Obviously my research lacked the proper due diligence.
I could stop right here and feel good about telling others why subscribing to more than one of the mainstream automotive magazines is a waste of money, but the argument would be incomplete without at least mentioning the downward-spiraling newswriting that somehow makes it to the print house. Arthur St. Antoine’s ‘the asphalt jungle’ column from MT crashed to new lows this month when he devoted an entire page to the concept of Google buying GM and re-inventing the brand. The article was half-hearted and half-witted, adding up to one complete waste of mindless drivel that starting nowhere and ended nowhere. I single out St. Antoine only because there aren’t enough keyboard strokes in my arthritic fingers to single out all the offenders.
Magazines such as R&T and MT are at the top of their field in terms of perceived reputation. Just getting your foot in the door — let alone a full page or two every month to demonstrate your skills — is reserved for the top in their field. Hundreds or thousands of would-be candidates would kill for an inch of copy space, and most of them would pay money out of their own pockets for the privilege. I know I would. American car magazines used to be about substance. Strong journalism, captivating photography, and I-never-knew-that information ran from page to page. Today, most of them are nothing more than rhetorical bird cage liners of failing copy and faltering benchmarks. A few periodicals like Evo and upstart bi-monthly AUTO Aficionado understand the responsibility, but they are the exceptions in a world of exceptional mediocrity.
You’re fired. Letters sent.
