Old Car Magazines

Anyone else into buying/collecting (American) vintage car magazines? I can't get enough of them. And by vintage I mean 30's - 70's. The ones I know about are "Car Life" "Car Speed and Style" & "Motor Trend". Any others?

 

And in case this hasn't been posted - this list of the 50 worst cars of all time is hilarious.

http://content.time.com/time/specials/2007/0,28757,1658545,00.html

 

IMO the best American car magazine back in the day was Road & Track. I have a complete run from 1960-1970, the majority of issues from the 1970s, and some odds and ends from the 1950s. Sad to say, like many other car magazines it's now a pale shadow of what it used to be in its glory days.

For hot rods, some of the more popular magazines were Hot Rod, Rod & Custom, and Popular Hot Rodding. And though they weren't technically car magazines, Tom McCahill's new car tests in Mechanix Illustrated had a devoted following among gearheads, as did the long-running "Gus and the Model Garage" series in Popular Science.

 

I have :
Hot Rod:
November 1963
Feb 1964
Motor trend:
Jan 1964
Car Craft:
Feb 1963
Jan 1964
Feb 1964
Aug 1964
Rod & Custom:
July 1962

 

Motor Life was published up to about 1961, and was in the Motor Trend style. Sports Cars Illustrated was the predecessor of the current-day Car and Driver, and changed its name in about 1961-62. There was one of those "small" magazines called Custom Cars in the late 50s/early 60s. Also Rod Builder & Customizer, which I think lasted intp the mid-1960s.

 

I still have the first issue of David E. Davis magazine "Automobile" from the eighties.

 

I saw it. Thought it was pretty stupid to put things like The Model T in there. 19th Century rural Life was isolated and oppressive. The Model T was the first step, long before electricity in many areas, in connecting isolated hamlets to the rest of the country. The Crosley Hot Shot wasn't a bad little car either, and was the only sports car made in America at the time. Early Crosley's, with their pressed steel engines definitely belonged, but by the time of the Hot Shot Crosley had a high revving, reliable engine that continued in production long after the company stopped making cars.

 

There were a few dubious inclusions - the 2002 BMW was one. A bit unfair based on people who couldn't operate the idrive.

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions. Motor Life,Car Craft and Road & Track look promising

 

For reference, etc, Cover Browser has several decades worth of magazine covers (click titles for direct links):

Motor Trend

Car and Driver

Automobile Magazine

Auto Age

Car Craft

Car Collector

Cars

Cars & Parts

 

My father has a bunch of old Hot Rod mags. Not sure how far back they go though

 

Very cool.....have to say that Motor Trend's "Car of the Year" for many years is ridiculous in retrospect.

 

1980 California Corvette and 1982 Camaro Iron Duke are two of my favorite bad cars on this list, particularly the Camaro. I would drive either one happily, and laugh as my passengers noticed I was flooring it and failing to pass school buses, garbage trucks, bicyclists, etc. and say "Don't put down my sporty muscle car, you're just jealous!"

 

Some (if not all) of their covers...

Hot Rod

Also, Hot Rodding

 

Like The Chevy Caprice in 1977...

 

I just finished reading through one book, part of a series I guess of "Barn Finds" an assortment of old 30's era upto 70's Muscle cars, and 80's Limited Factory models.

Amazing the amount of older cars sitting in a Barn or a Pole - Barn full of squirreled away cars, parts lying in neglect to this day!

Here's a site online:

http://barnfinds.com/

 

How so?

The all-new downsized Caprice for '77 was a very significant offering for a Big Three maker. And optioned out correctly, it wasn't bad to drive, as long as one of those options was the heavy duty handling suspension.

 

I have roughly 3,500 (if anything more) motorcycle magazine that I collected when I was younger, I used to pedal home from the swap meet on my ten speed balance a box of magazines. I've added to it on occasion if I would find a few my local library was getting rid of. The bulk would be late 60's through th early 80's. I have them all Cycle, Popular Cycyling, Cycle World, Dirt Bike (when Super Hunky was at his prime if anyone knows what I'm talking about), MotoCross Action....

So the dilemma is I've been thinking about getting rid of them and I can't bear the thought that they don't go to a good home. I really don't think they are library collection worthy, the would be expensive to ship if someone bought them, so.... I'd like to find a local cycle shop that would do some work in exchange for them, but so far no luck.

 

How so? It's ugly. The car's before my time so I can't say I've had the experience of driving one or even riding in one, but I do know it has a cult following along the lines of GM's concurrent G-Body vehicles.

 

Gotta disagree with you, wave. Modern cars are misshapen, ugly-a$$ little cockroaches, indistinguishable from one another. At least the Caprice/Impala looked like a real car, had nice body/roof proportions, and had interior room and comfort.

 

On a related note, I've wasted many happy hours at this site: http://www.oldcarmanualproject.com/

 

Possibly a Ford guy here!
I owned a 1989 Caprice, and it felt like an old car when I had it in the mid to late 90s, but I loved it! I thought it was cool looking. A classic look, not trendy.

 

Yes, today a '77 Caprice is a worn out old hooptie that's probably been turned into a Donk.

But you say the car is from before your time, and if you're talking about the validity of its Car Of The Year award, you have to judge it in the context of its time. The '77 Caprice replaced a car that was even larger and more ungainly, and it took a few years for the domestic competition to catch up, if ever.

The ubiquity of these old Caprices even today could be seen as a testament to their longevity, as well as large sales numbers.

 

But the MT COTY has been a joke for decades. Singling out the '77 Caprice from the rogues gallery of rolling nightmares on the COTY list seems a bit nearsighted to me.

Vega? Mustang II? Monza 2+2? Aspen/Volare? Omni/Horizon? Citation? Aries/Reliant? Jeez, from '71 to '81, the Caprice stands out as one of the least embarrassing award winners of the decade.

 

I can't say anything about those K-Cars that made the COTY list. The Shelby versions are as fun to drive as anything I've had. My list of cars owned, in order, with the (*) representing the ones I still have:

1973 Dodge Charger SE
1973 Plymouth Duster
1986 Ford Thunderbird
1986 Dodge Shelby Daytona C/S (*)
1986 Dodge Shelby Charger
1993 Ford Mustang LX
1990 Dodge Ramcharger 4X4
1981 Oldsmobile Cutlass
1997 Pontiac Grand Am GT
1991 Mitsubishi Mighty Max (*)
1989 Nissan Sentra
1998 Mercedes AMG C280 Sport (*)

And a million other temporary-drivers inbetwixt. Of all the ones I truly owned, the only ones I wouldn't want to see again are the Mustang and the Pontiac. (That stupid Sentra was a free car that had 300k+ on it when it was given to me and I drove it for probably two years after that. Still ran fine when I sold it.)

 

I post my opinions, not yours. I think the Caprice is the Wilford Brimley of automobiles. So what? To each his own.