Magazines to please your inner car enthusiast
The New York Auto show is parked at the Javits Center for its annual 10-day extravaganza and whether you’re going with a date or with a bunch of friends and looking to impress — or if you’re not going but still like to blow hot exhaust at the folks at work by talking about the demise of the sports car — grab a car-enthusiast magazine at the newsstand. We’re here to steer you to the right title.
Car and Driver
Hearst’s Car and Driver, the largest circulation US car title, is only for the wonkiest of auto-philes. Its April issue is stuffed with useless stats and charts, and its columnists couldn’t be more out of touch. The review of the fourth-generation Mazda Miata (mx-5) was done better by two rivals, and other reviews are stripped-down. Most disappointing was the 10-page feature on taking a Corvette, a Porsche 911 and a Nissan GT-R Nismo out on some California roads. With techno-talk — “the dual-clutch transmission was to react” — and free of any explanation of what it’s like to drive these beauties, it feels like watching a good porn flick blindfolded: You have a feeling something thrilling is happening, but you just can’t figure out what.
Motor Trend
Edward Loh, the editor-in-chief of Motor Trend, the 1.1 million- circulation title published by TEN, The Enthusiast Network, is someone any car fan would like to hang with. His passion comes through clearly in the pages of his May issue, with his columnists, feature stories and head-to-head fantasy car showdowns, etc. Stories on goddesses like Ferrari, McLaren and Porsche fit nicely beside items on shopping mall divas like the Honda Pilot and Land Rover. Well worth the $5.99 cover price.
Road & Track
Road & Track, the less popular Hearst garage-mate of Car and Driver, deserves better. Editor-in-Chief Larry Webster, behind the wheel for less than three years, uses photos better than any of his rivals — it’s very important to see these animals out in the wild. At the same time, the stories are written for the car fan who would like to know how it feels to drive one of the reviewed cars — and not for the person who just wants to know how the seats were crafted. The March/April issue is perfect for the person who is into cars but doesn’t know a petcock valve from a brake rotor.
Car
UK’s Car magazine is available at enough US locations to legitimately allow it a test drive alongside its stateside-based rivals. And it holds up fairly well. And here’s a secret why it should be a second read of any car buff: While automakers will rarely give two US mags access to a car in the same month, Car, because it is a UK title, often gets one or two of those models, which gives US readers a great second opinion.
New York
New York writer Jason Zengerle assembles some choice soundbites to brace us for what looks like the inevitable arrival of Hillary the Candidate. “She’s a schemer and a planner and a plodder,” GOP consultant Rick Wilson says of Clinton, reckoning she’s better suited to be a campaign strategist than an actual presidential candidate in 2016. That’s after a quote from Clinton herself, complaining during her 2000 Senate campaign about the press wanting to know “‘Who are you?’ and all of that … I don’t understand the need behind that.” Pat Buchanan is at least willing to venture a few thoughts on the subject: “She reminds me of Nixon.” Speaking of questionable attempts at rehabilitation, there’s also a good piece on Ray Rice, who’s been seeing a therapist recently.
The New Yorker
The New Yorker’s Nicholas Schmidle, whose 2011 exclusive about the raid on Bin Laden’s house has been questioned and contradicted so often, has a story about a couple of guys, one of them American, who stand accused of perpetrating a fraud that saddled a rich Saudi family with more than $22 billion in debt. In this case, the American, an Oxford-educated financier named Glenn Stewart, manages to give some choice insert-foot-in-mouth quotes, insisting he was “tricked, big time.” Complaining that “there’s no ability to negotiate with the rules and regulations” in the US, Stewart says: “In the Middle East, you can negotiate anything.”
Time
Time has a good cover package on the flare-up in Indiana over gay rights, providing an evenhanded treatment of the situation that’s not afraid to point out some of the uncomfortable complexities, if you will. While Apple CEO Tim Cook has taken on a superhero role lobbying against Indiana’s law, for example, his company meanwhile recently announced a deal to do business in Saudi Arabia, where homosexuals are subject to prison, floggings and even executions. Meanwhile, Rod Dreher of the American Conservative warns against a “scorched-earth policy” from liberal culture warriors that “treats orthodox Christians as outcasts, as gays were once wrongly treated.”