Car Craft Christmas - 2018

[cstmwgn]

Just got the December issue and no Krass & Bernnie!
If this is not a one-off mistake - I now have a subscription until March 22 that is completely void of any entertainment value!

[68scott385]

Now I'm really glad I didn't renew my subscription. Current subscription ends in April '19 so I've only got four more issues to be disappointed. Still not sure I like the direction Hunkins is going.

[SuperBuickGuy]

be absolutely certain they do not auto-renew you. The 'rate' they use is their most expensive renewal rate, not the rate you see in the fliers in the magazines.

[Monster]

This is the November issue of the last TEN sub I've got ...

[68scott385]

be absolutely certain they do not auto-renew you. The 'rate' they use is their most expensive renewal rate, not the rate you see in the fliers in the magazines.

Hard to be auto-renewed when you pay by check.

[SuperBuickGuy]

Hard to be auto-renewed when you pay by check.

then they auto-renew you and send you nasty-grams about how you need to pay for your renewal. it's almost like they don't want to stay in business because that crap is likely illegal and could be severely sanctioned.

[Deaf Bob]

then they auto-renew you and send you nasty-grams about how you need to pay for your renewal. it's almost like they don't want to stay in business because that crap is likely illegal and could be severely sanctioned.

Told them I did not order it, therefore under no obligation to pay.. Not long after they stopped..

[ratpatrol66]

Told them I did not order it, therefore under no obligation to pay.. Not long after they stopped..

I did the same and said I'd be happy to send the magazines back. .Never heard from them again.

[Gary 351C]

It's pretty sad when they have to resort to that. The only magazine I still get is Muscle Car Review and they're starting to loose me now. I have old issues dating back to Feb. 84 but their Holier-Than-Thou attitude lately is starting to turn me off.

[RockJustRock]

The car magazines made two big mistakes. First was over specializing. Used to be the fanatics bought EVERY car magazine. Then came the brand maazines. I was like 90% burned out on anything Chevy in the 70s. Then came SUPER CHEVY. Why would I want a magazine with guaranteed no MoPars? Why would I want to leave one of my favorite things, a car magazine, sitting on the shelf? So gradually I went back to leaving them ALL there.

Second mistake was over nostalgiacizing. I didn't give much of a crap what people were doing with cars before I was 12 or 13. Didn't care then, didn't care later. Stuff they did with cars after I turned 13, I was THERE. Or at least reading the magazines made me feel like I was there. No need to review things.

Yes there was always a need to grow the market, add more readers, but they began to neglect or give less importance to the NOW..

SO, there's the internet and there used to be magazines.

[Gateclyve Photographic]

The car magazines made two big mistakes. First was over specializing. Used to be the fanatics bought EVERY car magazine. Then came the brand maazines. I was like 90% burned out on anything Chevy in the 70s. Then came SUPER CHEVY. Why would I want a magazine with guaranteed no MoPars? Why would I want to leave one of my favorite things, a car magazine, sitting on the shelf? So gradually I went back to leaving them ALL there.

Certainly the specialty books dilute content from the general interest ones. But market segmentation has long been a trend in all forms of mass media. The general interest magazines tend to go where the advertisers, single issue sales and vocal readers take them. Hence, when kart makers, scale model companies and motorcycle companies buy ads, Hot Rod ran this content. Put a red Camaro on the cover and single-issue sales increase by 7-10 percent, you'll get more of the same. Conversely, get 90% of the letters to the editor complaining about "imports" and/or FWD and that content goes away.

Second mistake was over nostalgiacizing. I didn't give much of a crap what people were doing with cars before I was 12 or 13. Didn't care then, didn't care later. Stuff they did with cars after I turned 13, I was THERE. Or at least reading the magazines made me feel like I was there. No need to review things.

That's not a universal viewpoint. Plenty of Hot Rod Deluxe readers, for example, were born long after the build styles and stories depicted. The past often informs the future.

Moreover, one cannot discount the effects of the government regulated automobile on both advertising support and reader projects. Magazines don't really create trends. They mostly follow them and to an extent promote them. While the editorial values of the editors are certainly reflected in the mix, what you see in the book tends to reflect what's being done at the various levels of the sport. it's not like there are 5,000 FWD "tuner" cars on the Power Tour that HRM ignores for more '69 Camaros.

Currently, the economics of print suck. Without sufficient advertisers paying for quality stories, page counts and content suffer. Most print companies are overloaded with legacy costs (bureaucracy, debt). Paper and postage are ridiculously expensive.

SO, there's the internet and there used to be magazines.

And we mostly get what we pay for.

[Deaf Bob]

We study history to not make the same mistakes...

[SuperBuickGuy]

I don't miss CC, they stopped sending it and honestly I've not noticed until this thread popped back up. That said, my view has mellowed (outside of the really irritated that they charged my credit card without authorization - which isn't really them but the mag service).

This sounds so arrogant, but it's really not meant to be - there's nothing in their pages that I find educational. I've been doing cars since birth, so I do have some knowledge in what interests me and quite frankly their stuff just simply doesn't apply or I already knew. Not that they shouldn't publish what they are or change - just simply I'm in such a small group that they'd go bankrupt trying to print what is new to me.


Dear Car Craft (and all other TEN magazines)

We're done, it's not you, it's me

~SBG

PS - MTOD has never been a thing for me, but at least Velocity gives me something to watch while I eat lunch. Amazon has me covered for bathroom duties.

[Gateclyve Photographic]

We study history to not make the same mistakes...

Yep.

And if you read stuff like Robert Day's The Bosch Book of the Motor Car: Its Evolution and Engineering Development or any number of other books, you'll quickly conclude that more than a few have studied history to inspire current developments.

Most of what we view as "new" are just refinements of stuff that first happened in the early and middle decades of automobile engineering.

Almost nothing in the design and engineering of modern vehicles, except for some of the microchip and materials stuff, has an origin less than fifty years old. Most of the key ideas are in excess of 80-100 years old.

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

[RockJustRock]

Well to me it looks like RPM is doing a lot of things right. I don't read it but somebody must and it just keeps going. If their content was broader the way they cross breed a print product with an internet one is very appealing. Put up Hot Rod, Car Craft or any other magazine like that, ad supported and most of us would be THERE.

My feeling was that news stand and subscription revenue was never that high a percentage of magazine revenue. Can't understand why print publishers try SO hard to bring that element of reader commitment to the internet. Even the newspapers do it. Pay $1 a month for the privilege of viewing ads on our web page. And NOBODY thinks to offer an ad free version. I happily pay You Tube the $10@month to avoid THEIR ads. They were smart in making their ads obtrusive, interrupting the flow there. God forbid, but if I had to X out full screen ads on BangShift I'd throw B,B, and C a few bucks to end that torture as well. The newspaper sites make you x out ads THEN beg for that buck.

You Tube keeps getting stuff right and nobody pays attention. Facebook get s enough right to be the biggest of THEIR type and people just attack them for their success. Look at what succeeds the best and try to improve on that. Is that too complicated to understand? Google just started with the most effective search algorithms and built from that avoiding mistakes and killing off that which failed. But this internet thing is going to keep working no matter how badly people fail at trying to exploit it.