Old car magazines

I grew up reading my dad's old car magazines from the '60s, but the other night I spent a few hours going through them--needed to find something for a Classic Motorsports project. Anyway, how times have changed--lots of ads for cigarettes, cameras and reel to reel tape players.

The worst part about those old magazines are the classified ads: 1965 Cobra, only raced once, extra wheels, $3500.

I love looking through old magazines sometimes too. I've been a subscriber to car magazines since the early 80's. I always collected them, though when I was really young, I used to cut out pictures. What really sucks is my apartment building burned to the ground back in '94 or '95, so I lost everything, including my magazine collection. I didn't start collecting again until the late 90's, so I don't have the stuff from the 80's anymore. But even looking at the stuff from the 90's is cool.

Also lost in that fire was a car book from about 1912 or so. It was basically a catalog of all cars available in the US at the time, with pictures, prices, etc... I think it was a way of car shopping then. That was a really cool book.

Had a job in high school making miscellaneous small parts for Corvette restorations (company manufactured firewall insulation and install kits, hardware kits, grommet sets, etc). Long weekends in the paint booth getting light-headed on Plasti-dip that we sprayed on one side of the firewall insulation.

The best part of my day was right after lunch; grab a 40 or 50 year-old HotRod magazine and go sit on the can for 20 minutes and flip through it. I don't have nearly enough old car mags.

I have a few older mags kicking around. I have some Hot Rod magazines from the mid 60's that are pretty cool. One issue has a feature of the revolutionary (at the time) Pontiac OHC 6 which is really cool.

My favorite piece of vintage automotive literature has to be my early 1920's Automobile Blue Book for New England. I believe it's from 1920 or 1922. It's pretty much a combination of a road atlas and a modern AAA travel guide. It has step-by-step directions on how to get to popular cities, towns, and resorts, and is chock full of really cool vintage advertising.

I found an old magazine, in my attic, called Auto-X. It had a VW Rabbit on the cover and some really cool articles.

That Rabbit was, more than likely, Randy Pobst's autocross car, because "back in the day" he was a talented local autocrosser we liked to work with. (We still like to work with him, but Randy usually keeps pretty busy being a pro racer these days.)

Margie

In reply to Marjorie Suddard:

I think the cover showed the rabbit on a used car lot. I wish I still had the magazine, the box it was in got wet last year. I probably had 6 or 7 issues of Auto-X in it.

David S. Wallens wrote: I grew up reading my dad's old car magazines from the '60s, but the other night I spent a few hours going through them--needed to find something for a Classic Motorsports project. Anyway, how times have changed--lots of ads for cigarettes, cameras and reel to reel tape players. The worst part about those old magazines are the classified ads: 1965 Cobra, only raced once, extra wheels, $3500.

How about all those MG Mitten ads? I remember penciling-in racing stripes, fender mirrors and roll bars on the Midget featured in their full-pagers.

You know, back when an Ansa exhaust implied a quality product?

I was devoted to R&T, C/D and SportsCarGraphic in the mid-sixties; when (years ago) a benevolent, anonymous person left boxes of old issues at the front of my store, I kept more than a few.

David S. Wallens wrote: Anyway, how times have changed--lots of ads for cigarettes, cameras and reel to reel tape players. The worst part about those old magazines are the classified ads: 1965 Cobra, only raced once, extra wheels, $3500.

i have a box of Popular Mechanics from the mid-'50s, and most of the ads are how you can be your own boss sharpening saws, etc.

i started reading Hemmings Motor News in about 1982 and I can very clearly remember ads for AC Cobra 427s at around $7k.

I have the full year 1970 Road & Track. I read the for sale section and shake my fist in the air.....

WHY didn't my father buy an old Cobra, Corvette, or 356? What was he doing? (Oh yeah, raising 5 kids and moving across the Midwest for Grinnell Fire Protection).

WHY?

I have every Hot Rod Magazine from September 1967 and Auto-X/GRM from January 1987. It's interesting to go back and reread stuff from 25 and 45 years ago.

I have almost every road and track from the beginning in'48 until about 1990....and in one of the'50's is a type 37 Bugatti for 950 dollars....a 166 Ferrari for 3,500, and on and on....where's a flux capacitor when you need one....

When I was around 15, I found a bunch of my uncle's old car magazines from the 60's in my grandmother's attic. There was a good mix of everything, from Hot Rod and a bunch of rag racing magazines, a bunch of custom car stuff, a few dune buggy ones, plus R+T, Car and Driver, Car Life and Motor Trend. I still have most of them and they're still fun to read.

I also found some unbuilt model kits.