19 Auto Magazines bite the dust

Support your last 3 mopar magazines instead of whining about how you don't like _________

Here is the full list of the 19 publications ending their print run.

4-Wheel & Off-Road
Automobile
Car Craft
Chevy High Performance
Classic Trucks 
Diesel Power
Hot Rod Deluxe 
Jp
Lowrider
Mopar Muscle
Muscle Car Review
Muscle Mustangs & Fast Fords
Mustang Monthly
Street Rodder
Super Chevy 
Super Street
Truck Trend 
Truckin’
Vette


Story here

I saw that on Facebook, Dave Frieberger had posted it and people started sharing his post.

They'll still exist, but only as online subscriptions.

Just another thing that the internet has changed how it's done.

Ohhhhhh.........NO WAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You mean toyota and Blunder Motors no longer make the best vehicles in the Universe???????

That can't possibly be!

Did a little thing called "real World" car owners venting on this new, uncensored thing called the "Internet" cause some sort of a downfall to toyota and Blunder Motors glorious ratings?

No Schitt Sherlock!

"percieved" quality, when is consumer reports and jd power going to go down the sewer where they belong as well?

All I can say is GOOD RIDDANCE. I would have thought at the time "Escort" radar detectors should have sold more units than toyota and BM for all the advertising space they served up.



Out of all of those rags I must give some praise to David E Davis Jr. and his Staff at Automobile for their comical, yet truthful publication.

As a graphic designer who predominantly does print work, I am living this every day. I’ve made my living doing direct mail catalogs. Those are being supplanted by websites too. What can you say, everything evolves.

Yet more proof that our hobby is dying!

Back in the late '90's I used to buy Street Rodder off the newstand religiously. I remember them being excited and proud that each month they had 300 pages each month (I think that was the number.. ). And, no, it wasn't just a catalog with a few articles thrown in. My interest waned and once they were bought out and went back to a 'normal' amount of pages, I stopped buying it.

Speaking of buying, what's the price of a magazine up to.......$7.00 or higher? For less than 100 pages with the bulk of it being advertising? Gee, could that be part of the problem?

E-zines have been a thing for almost 15 years and I want to say the pioneer was Time Inc. They produce Time, Sports Illustrated and People magazine among other titles.

When the bottom dropped out of the economy in 08 I was working a BS retirement job at a magazine factory. We did titles across many segments - the Time weeklys above, Family Circle and it's mirror Parents, W magazine (big glossy fashion mag), the biker trilogy (V-Twin for PG audience, Biker was more R rated, In the Wind could have been Hustler with some tweaks) and a bunch of other stuff including Car and Driver, LMC catalogs, some huge musician supply catalog, etc, etc.

It took maybe 6 months to trickle down to the production floor but probably 40% of the work went poof. It started as all the same titles and the same number of monthly books but the page counts were way down because advertising dollars went elsewhere. Time and Sports Illustrated was a big job for us and they lost a lot of pages just from GM going bankrupt. Less ad revenue for the publisher led to squeezing the printers for better prices. When the efficiency experts showed up, that's when I knew the grave was being dug.

The big players in the industry started buying up the smaller ones just for their print orders. The physical assets that were part of the purchase (buildings, equipment, labor) got scraped. Take excess production capacity out of the market to prop up supply based pricing in the face of dwindling demand. By the time I got fired for my attitude problem the only thing keeping the lights on was the one million plus junk mail Coupon Clipper rags we did every week. It was deja vu for the idiots running the place as they had been big dogs in the paper catalog business before the rise of ecommerce and on line shopping. At least I got out before they got bought and shuttered a year or so later.

At the time one reality show I watched was Swamp Loggers. The premise was basically Axe Men in the bayou. Harvesting low grade lumber from flooded tracts and kinda interesting in the way Gold Rush is - the machines and the process. Almost everything they cut down went to pulp mills for making paper. The main drama element over the last couple seasons was the companies going broke because the paper companies were going broke and not buying as much raw material. Magazine printing companies buy paper by the train load. Subscription vs news stand is about a 90 / 10 split so the US Postal Service took a hit too.

On a brighter note, my next pointless retirement job ended up being internet proof. I got a gig in distribution center for Kelloggs. I can't imagine them coming up with a way to email pop tarts and corn flakes anytime soon.

You can dd Autoweek to this list, got my last print issue about a month ago.

I tried, I just don't sit down and read anything really. If I see something on here or facebook that catches my interest I will dig into and it and read all about it. But I seldom pick up anything too read just because. I have done two subscriptions to hot rod over the last few years and I only read one issue from each year, it was the issues my car was in for drag week lol. The rest collected dust.

I think the market got saturated. Half those mags listed covered the same crap. You can only build so many SB Chev(or LS) motors before the readers get bored and decide to spend their money elsewhere. I dropped Hot Rod many years ago for that reason....don't miss it one bit. Hell they keep trying to practically give it to me and I won't. It would end up in the recycle bin anyway. Consider the 100 pages of ads and there really isn't a ton of content. I agree with the comment about Consumer Reports and JD Power.....complete garbage!!

Well the tree huggers will be happy, that'll save a lot of trees , Not sure about the USPO though, probably use it as an excuse to raise the price of stamps again

On a brighter note, my next pointless retirement job ended up being internet proof. I got a gig in distribution center for Kelloggs. I can't imagine them coming up with a way to email pop tarts and corn flakes anytime soon

The may be internet proof, but they're not millennial proof........... LINKY

when is this to take effect, and will the publisher contact subscribers in any way ?
i have four titles that are going internet, and i just don't have the time to sit in front of a screen all day to view 'em.

Ya know, I actually believe that. My girl is a millennial and her idea of rinsing a dish is giving it to the dog to lick clean.

Kellogg owns Keebler and a few other big brands. A slow down on the cereal side would actually be a good thing as they usually run mandatory overtime in the summer to try to keep up. Truth be told, doesn't really matter any more. Most of the managers let me slide on the mandatory OT thing because they knew I'd get fired for attendance points if they pushed it. The new blood HR bimby brought in a new blood manager that was a total dick and I got applauded and then fired for gross insubordination.

I decided to retire a year or two early before I got to the door.

I actually considered renewing my mopar muscle subscription, but it just got thinner and thinner so I didn't bother. Nothing but advertising anyway. Hopefully mopar action sticks around, at least the articles are entertaining.

This really stinks.I just renewed my subscription to Muscle Car Review.

This really stinks.I just renewed my subscription to Muscle Car Review.




Me too, just renewed MCR

Mopar Muscle is a useless ad-filled rag anyway !! Current Jan 2020 issue 74 pages (the call the front ant back covers "pages" !!) of which 27 pages have ads and most of those are full-page.

About the only one I buy anymore is Collectible Automobile. Nice variety of cars featured, and no ads.

I used to buy Car Craft & Muscle Car Review, but like others here have said, they got thinner on content and loaded up on advertisements. Most of the ads didn't even apply to me because I'm Canadian and have no access to most of them anyway.

Not to mention, in my dead end little town anyway, children/young adults just aren't into cars anymore. They're too expensive and (according to some of the kids) too complex to work on. So, it comes as no surprise to me that another bunch of magazines are going away. It's sad, but I guess that's the direction the world is going.

I'm still envious that a lot of you guys got to enjoy the golden years in the 50's, 60's and 70's. I caught the tail end of it all in the 80's but can say from my experiences, car culture is definitely on the wane.

I will say though.... this last year at the Portland Swapmeet..... I wasn't the youngest person there! Quite a few 20-somethings buying parts and talking about their projects. So, that was refreshing.

People like to think that the old days were so much better than what we are living today. Sometimes it is true though.
I bought my Duster in early 2007 and Randy Bolig was the Editor of Mopar Muscle at that time. He seemed like a regular guy with regular goals. The magazine was my first foray into car magazines, followed by Mopar Action.
The next guy, Johnny Hunkins seemed like a decent guy too. I met him in Van Nuys one year at the Spring Fling. The magazine was a bit different but still worth reading.
When they dumped Hunkins, they appeared to make a few other changes. The new Editor was a bit standoffish. The tech was okay in some cases but flat out incorrect in other cases. I got tired of seeing AMD articles on metal replacement in every issue. Most old cars do need metal replacement but the limited space of a magazine don't allow for a proper "how-to" to make a successful repair. They then added monthly GRAVEYARD CARZ articles on the same stuff they had already shown on TV. Out of respect for the past, I kept subscribing even though it was like keeping a girlfriend after she developed a bunch of unsavory habits.

I've been in the printing industry since the early 80's. If I can hang on for 5 more years,........

i don't see any real loss there. couldn't care less if the last of the "mopar" magazines go either. all a waste of money anymore. can get any information they have in them on the internet a lot faster then searching through old magazines. they are mostly new product advertising magazines anymore. can read about that social media all over the place. as far as the features go.. all the same stuff. too many run the same high dollar vehicle... again the cars appear on the internet before they do in the magazines.... can't remember the last time i bought a car magazine... i only feel sorry for those that will be put out of work. hopefully they can be kept on in the internet version version...




.

Mopar Muscle just got thinner and thinner. I didn't renew about 2 years ago. Got tired of seeing the, "Hey, I had a wad of money and someone else built my car in 6 months" type articles. I'd have loved to see an article where someone redid a 69 Fury, etc, just to be different. I'm not poor, but what MM was portraying just wasn't realistic to most of their readers.

Maybe Survivor and Prepers magazines will fill the void.

At least all our old stuff will run after an EMP. No internet though.

The cell phone replaced the magazine for bowl reading.
End of story..

The article was written to debunk the New York Times article by proving it was actually because we care about our health, and we typically need to leave the house quickly so eat on the go (insert comment about oversleeping I guess)...not that we don't do dishes.





Not hardly, the sport is alive and well, even with the younger crowd. It's the Mopar following that's dying unfortunately, and some of us aren't helping.

I used to buy magazine but three things killed it for me.

#1. No new content. I realize they can't tell people how to degree in a cam 1 time and expect everyone for the next 20 years to find and read that story form 20 years ago. some material just needs to be repeated for the new crowd but that is all they ever did. How about tossing in an article about something you have never done before. once a month.
#2 Cost. I continued to buy them for the pictures but eventually the cost wasn't worth it.
#3 I got too busy to read magazines. In this world of being overly busy I just didn't have time. If #1 hadn't been a problem I would have probably bought them and stockpiled them to read .... eventually.

A foretelling of infolinks here?

Was surprised to see AutoWeek go

Just got my HR rag, mighty thin

I just got my new Muscle Car Review and Hot Rod in the mail yesterday. The MCR is January 2020 and I assume that will be the last one?
I was really looking forward to seeing their coverage of last months MCACN which would have come out in a few more months. My subscription runs through May so at least I was down to only 4 issues left in my subscription.
Long time subscriber and I am sad to see it go. I hope Hemmings Muscle Machines and Classic Car are able to keep going. Hemmings recently shut down their import and sports car magazine and combined it with Classic Car. I wonder if the time will come where they end up combining Muscle Machines with Classic Car.
I really don't think the issues going on with the magazine industry mean the automotive hobby is dying. I think it's a reflection of the change to the digital age. I have millennial coworkers who think it's amusing I still subscribe to a Chicago print newspaper. They get all their news online. I look at news online too, but it isn't the same as looking at an actual newspaper to me. Apparently that means I am a old dinosaur.

Yeah I am hoping Muscle Machine keeps going. It's a nice blend.

My paper decided they wanted to charge more for home delivery than what you could buy the paper for in the store. I did not understand the logic unless it was to reduce subscribers.

The muscle car mags tainted me in the 80s and 90s with all the chevy bias. Yes the 350 outsold mopars like 15 to 1. But still. But in 2019 traditional cool American hobbies are very low if not disappearing with the young crowd. V8 classic cars, motorcycles- I even see Gibson guitars is experiencing slumping sales. All things that in the old days were admired by fellas.

Is MCG still in print?

Haven't seen it in awhile..

got my new issue the other day, so yes.
they tried a deal some time ago where the add listing and additional content was on line, but that didn't seem to pan out for some reason.
i just hope the publisher sends out something that states when this is going to happen.

Walked by the local drug store's magazine stand yesterday, and looked at some of the titles.
The train (full size & scale modelling), aircraft (several types/genres), guns, fashion, travel, etc seem to be still going strong.
Most of those would seem to have small, niche audiences, most have fewer ads, and no project-car-pipeline/parts-promotion like car magazines do.

Can't help but wonder if there's more to the story.

It makes more of those who have had their car featured in a magazine that much more special. I rarely see the same feature twice online, by the time you read it there is another five articles to see and you forgot where you saw it. a Magazine is reference forever.

Hemmings Muscle Machines seems to be holding on. they did shut down their sports and exotic magazine.

This migration to virtual print is inevitable.

Printed magazines cost too much and it is too slow a process to produce.

Many were sad when the horse was replaced by the auto but they came around

From the publishers perspective, newsstand sales are mostly a way to sell subscriptions. When I was working in the magazine factory every title did some newsstand but the bulk of the run, 90% or more, was subscription. The other thing I was told is that maybe 1/2 of the newsstand run gets shipped back from the retailer to the distributor and tossed in the recycle bin. When the distributor delivers the current issue, they scoop up the unsold previous issue.

It’s a shame though. I still enjoy the magazines, the online versions just don’t seem to work well in the format plus when on a computer a lot it’s nice to get away from screen time and read a book or magazine. Also hate dealing with the adsthat are heavily associated with online magazines.

We can’t say it’s a shame all we want, but here we are posting on the medium that is killing the printed page.

Would we want to go back to no internet and the magazines and bar buddies for our information? I think most answers, if we’re being honest, would be no.

Technology did us a big favor, but there are some concessions we are having to make.

People got along just fine before the internet. Is your life that much better because of it?

The widespread availability of information (on any topic) is FAR batter. The ability to see other cars, and hear about them, and their owners, from all over the world is FAR better. I get along fine with people...you?

I'm not trying to instigate anything. I just think that once the internet became a household thing, the amount of freaks and weirdos grew exponentially.

...and here you are.
LOL

They were always there - it's your access to them (or vice versa) that grew.

That logic also applies to other societal concerns, one I cannot refer to as per forum rules?

Because I don't, I think we have universally become much more self centered, among other things, and that has a snowball effect.

Print media is dying
The Internet is the reason

Print media is a one way information channel (letters to the editor notwithstanding)
The Internet is often an open discussion.

Print media shared a very limited amount of info.
The Internet shares volumes.

If magazines are a casualty, so be it. I’m sure if readers are willing to pay $100/year for their mag they can stay in business.
Market forces at work.

Internet has given access to great things and bad. Im glad I was around and functioning fine pre internet but I will keep and use it now in my life. In all seriousness the death of many published magazines and newspapers should be a massive massive reduction is tree cutting to make all that paper.

that paper will now be used for more trash advertising junk mail you will get every day.

I'm not sure about the rest of them, but according to customer service at TEN, "Street Rodder has ceased all publication."
No digital issues online.

Sorry to see the demise of Street Rodder. A little outside of my genre, but it was the thickest magazine on the rack, and always had good fabrication articles that could be applied to just about any project.

Received a notice in the mail yesterday that "Automobile" magazine is no more. I recall when David E. Davis started that mag, it always had quality writers. Looks like I get 6 months of free Motor Trend streaming video and a digital subscription to MT, 4x4 or Hot Rod.
Really amazing shift. At one time (ending around 2010) I was a nationally syndicated automotive writer, and at that time, writers whose material appeared exclusively on the internet were specifically excluded from most of the press events I attended..

They currently do no know what they are going to do with all these brands. If they will do an online magazine, or just continue to add content to the HotRod.com website.

I'm still doing my Hot Rod Column.... everything else is gone as of right now.

I agree. They started running post '49 cars when Rod & Custom folded, which was nice.
The new issue mentions a "MIG welder must-haves" article online, I can't find it.
I don't know if it's on the digital sub site, or what the deal is.
It looks like I'll have 3 years added on to my Hot Rod sub with the demise of Mopar Muscle, Car Craft, and Street Rodder.