KyAllroad (Jeremy) said:The $10 per issue thing made it a non-starter for me. In fact I believe I started a thread about that back when their first issue hit the stands.
Can anyone find that thread and see who called their demise the most accurately?
Looks like I had a thread on it too: https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/off-topic-discussion/so-roadkill-is-going-to-have-a-magazine-now/104316/page1/
z31maniac said:1988RedT2 said:Ouch. Their grammars are not good.
What grammar rules did they violate, specifically? I'm genuinely curious. I see this accusation all the time when people don't like something.
That memo is full of comma splices:
Comma Splices. Comma splices are similar to run-on sentences because they also incorrectly connect independent clauses. A comma splice occurs when two independent clauses are connected with only a comma
NickD said:Javelin said:Funny, I just let my Hot Rod subscription lapse after 17 years.
I considered it while that Evan Perkins clown was editor for all of a year. The magazine really went downhill under him. Massive errors on the cover (like when the title proclaimed a car was twin-turbocharged when it clearly had a single ProCharger. Or when the cover talked about a car that wasn't even in the issue, and then was featured the next month). A story that was featured a few months earlier was reprinted with seemingly no explanation or reason or apology. The tech articles started getting jumbled all throughout the magazine. And just a number of mediocre single-page stories on important subjects.
Those are the issues that killed it for me, especially the cover with no article and the article reprinted months later. It really drove home that it was just the same garbage over and over and none of it was interesting.
Javelin said:NickD said:Javelin said:Funny, I just let my Hot Rod subscription lapse after 17 years.
I considered it while that Evan Perkins clown was editor for all of a year. The magazine really went downhill under him. Massive errors on the cover (like when the title proclaimed a car was twin-turbocharged when it clearly had a single ProCharger. Or when the cover talked about a car that wasn't even in the issue, and then was featured the next month). A story that was featured a few months earlier was reprinted with seemingly no explanation or reason or apology. The tech articles started getting jumbled all throughout the magazine. And just a number of mediocre single-page stories on important subjects.
Those are the issues that killed it for me, especially the cover with no article and the article reprinted months later. It really drove home that it was just the same garbage over and over and none of it was interesting.
Yeah, I remember seeing the 4-door 'Cuda on the cover of that issue and flipping through the issue several times thinking I missed it, and then checking the table of contents and seeing that there was nothing about it in there. I'm hoping that with that goof gone and Johnny Hunkins (former editor of Popular Hot Rodding and all-around good dude) taking over it might turn things around.
z31maniac said:1988RedT2 said:Ouch. Their grammars are not good.
What grammar rules did they violate, specifically? I'm genuinely curious. I see this accusation all the time when people don't like something.
"... brings you the best performance car coverage than any other magazine..."
Lots of changes happening over there at TEN since the Discovery Channel bought them last year. Lucky and I have talked about it last summer.
With Discovery/Motortrendondemand getting into bed with eachother the shows like Ass Monkey Garage and Street Outlaws getting big salary payouts to the "Stars" of the shows its just a matter of time before it turns into an implosion and a pile of rubble on the floor.
Here at Autobooks-Aerobooks we sell mags that run up to $35.00 (Auto & Design). Ten bucks is toward the low end of the spectrum for a car mag. The British mags all run north of $9.95 (and going up with the dollar weakening against the pound). Race Engine Technology is $25 and worth every penny. Airmighty is $23.95 and one of the most beautifully photographed mags on any subject I've ever seen. Rodder's Journal is $15.99 and sells out every issue. Hop Up runs $14.95 and sells out (at least 30 copies each quarterly issue ). Plus we have Hop Up back issues at full whack and sell them out as well. There are many other examples.
The big difference between those mags and Roadkill is, you didn't see all the content of those other mags on Velocity or YouTube a month ago for free. I didn't see anything in Roadkill that amplified anything from the TV shows. They didn't really dig any deeper on any project than what you see on the screen. Plus, there's too much hoonage in both the mag and the TV show for my taste. Most of their junk (in the Freiburger sense) is junk (in the everybody else sense), too. So ten bucks for a cursory review is too much.
I feel worse for contributors like Elana Scherr, a fine writer and valued customer at our store. Hey, she's gotta find Opel GT books somewhere.
All the $5.99 mags are disappearing or coughing up blood. They have less content, more ads, and keep shrinking as time goes on. People are still talking about Hemming's Sports & Exotic going Tango Uniform. If they charged another dollar, they'd still be in business. Trust me when I tell you magazines like Race Engine Technology and their ilk are worth every penny. Sometimes I have to sit there with a calculator and a notepad while reading an article because it's written for adults and the subject matter can be very dense. I learn something new from every single issue, though. So what you get from a publication is the reason to buy it, not the cover price.
Any wingnuts remember Wings & Airpower? That magazine read better than most books, with photographs not seen in any other medium ( Thanks, Pete Bowers.) I shed a tear when that publication folded.
Sad I have to learn about it here while the publishing house sends me endless marketing emails hoping I will buy their other rags.
I love Roadkill the video series. It makes me think how good Top Gear USA could have been instead of cringe-inducing. Thrilled was I when I found out there was a magazine, so I subscribed.
Yawn.
I was expecting Freiburger quality stories that went more in-depth on their hack builds. I really wanted to learn more about the VetteKart for example. Nope, just a few photos and lots of horrible page layout with difficult to read text. I have two issues sitting here now; only read the first one and was quite disappointed.
So few magazines appeal to me anymore. I drive a Mustang but don't find much interesting in any of the Mustang rags out there. Too many of the Hot Rod style mags are big on flash, short on substance and only deal in projects costing more than I make in a year. I don't get GRM or CM anymore either (not because they are bad magazines--they aren't--they just cater to a demographic I'm not really a part of). Only one I get (and really enjoy) is Motorcycle Classics. I still tout Vintage Truck to everyone but my interest in the subject waned after selling my old truck.
The print business certainly is in a transformative state. I probably should peruse some of the higher end magazines on the rack but balk at paying $15 for a periodical.
A very expensive and fancy looking magazine in which junkyard trash is written about (poorly). Ironic
they should have gone with newsprint and made it look like an underground zine from back in the day.
In reply to Javelin :
I still miss Car Model magazine from the 60's & 70's... :(
I too thought the rubbery cover was odd - gave me the willies.
I’ve bought the $6 a year Hot Rod magazine and usually pick through it in 20 minutes. Now I get Motor Trend and don’t feel bad Recycling it after picking through it the day I get it.
Shoot - lunch at Panda Express cost me $10 last Wednesday.
Jerry From LA said:Here at Autobooks-Aerobooks we sell mags that run up to $35.00 (Auto & Design). Ten bucks is toward the low end of the spectrum for a car mag. The British mags all run north of $9.95 (and going up with the dollar weakening against the pound). Race Engine Technology is $25 and worth every penny. Airmighty is $23.95 and one of the most beautifully photographed mags on any subject I've ever seen. Rodder's Journal is $15.99 and sells out every issue. Hop Up runs $14.95 and sells out (at least 30 copies each quarterly issue ). Plus we have Hop Up back issues at full whack and sell them out as well. There are many other examples.
I pick up a copy of Octane magazine every now and then. It's pricey but there's a lot of good content - you don't read it in just one visit to the bathroom, 
The other high priced mag I get regularly is The Rodder's Journal. The articles and photography are excellent (although I'll miss Pat Ganahl's contributions now that he's retired). I'm something of a fan of hot rod and custom history, and in most issues they will have stories about some iconic car that has been found and restored.
I still subscribe to Hot Rod, I've been getting it for decades now I guess plus I've been buying older copies here and there - I have most of them going back to the mid-1950s (plus the reissued copies of the first half dozen issues from 1948.). It does have its ups and downs (I'm looking forward to what Johnny Hunkins will be doing to the editorial content as well) but it's been a lot worse in the past...there was the whole van thing in the early 70s, the lame smog era projects in the late 70s and early 80s, and in the late 80s they got into pushing Harley-Davidson bikes real hard which never made much sense for a car magazine.
Rod & Custom was my fave ,but alas.....I'm not a big billet fan at all (Street Rodder). 
I bought a top gear magazine when my wife went into the hospital to give birth to our son. It was very expensive, but it was also massive. That's the most expensive magazine I've bought.
The S3 mag seems interesting and at $20 for two years ( admittedly did not check number of issues yet ) I'll probably bite. 
I bought my subscription to Roadkill from one of their marketing booths at the Kentucky Rolex 3 day eventing last year. I don't remember what the exact cost was, but it was much cheaper than the per issue cost. I enjoyed the magazine but I also seem to miss a lot of the web shows.
As I flip through the issue of Hot Rod I found something that gave me flashbacks to last year when the schmucks at Skip Barber tried to upsell my 3 day school to a 5 day the week before they filed bankruptcy.
I've had Sport Compact Car, Modified, Bimmer and now European Car go belly up on me. Road and Track is only 9 issues a year now. The big boys like Car and Driver and Motor Trend seem to be hanging in there.
I miss SCC, that magazine was full of interesting articles...
I loved SCC I'll occasionally pull a late 90s nearly 300 page issue off the shelf and read it for what must be the hundredth time. I guess I'm the minority who found the Roadkill magazine charming yes the textured cover was odd and yes they were recapping stuff they did on film but what I enjoyed was the event coverage. One of our own appeared in an issue (you can probably guess who and why) things that were never part of the show made the magazine. I can't say I'm thrilled about the whole replacement magazine deal. I wound up with like 6 copies of Modified after SCC folded and my eyes still burn I simply don't see how Modified and Hot Rod are different I guess Asian women vs Viagra ads.
Yup. When Rod & Custom folded (for, what, like the 3rd or 4th time)they sent me Streetrodder for 3 years to make up for it. Didn't read one issue.
logdog said:I bought my subscription to Roadkill from one of their marketing booths at the Kentucky Rolex 3 day eventing last year. I don't remember what the exact cost was, but it was much cheaper than the per issue cost. I enjoyed the magazine but I also seem to miss a lot of the web shows.
As I flip through the issue of Hot Rod I found something that gave me flashbacks to last year when the schmucks at Skip Barber tried to upsell my 3 day school to a 5 day the week before they filed bankruptcy.
Too funny. I was just going to post the same thing. Showed my wife, whose response was "How berkeleying stupid is that?"
Jerry From LA said:Here at Autobooks-Aerobooks we sell mags that run up to $35.00 (Auto & Design).
I remember coming in and looking for the Roadkill Mag when they announced it being on the shelves, The gal behind the counter didnt even know they had a publication, They didnt seem to promote it through the distributors they were already using.
I was hoping they would gointo more detail on their builds and maybe do features on readers cars but it was just the same crap that they had on the Youtube and Motortrend on demand site. I felt it was just trying to get more subscriptions to the Motortrend channel
nutherjrfan said:The S3 mag seems interesting and at $20 for two years ( admittedly did not check number of issues yet ) I'll probably bite.
For some reason several years back, for a very short time they had a lifetime subscription deal for not a lot of $$, so I jumped on it. They let it lapse and I emailed them about and been getting it non stop since.
Mostly tuner scene stuff, and kind of annoying amounts of scene jargon (ex: if you get annoyed by the guys on the hoonigan videos, thats what I relate some of the writing to) Not really much technical stuff but they (IMO) feature a variety of cool street/track cars, occasionally motorcycles, trucks, off road rigs. Event coverage, a couple new car reviews. Seems like a bunch of guys just sharing what they think is cool. Which is fine. Better than advertising and marketing driven crap.
boaty mcfailface said:nutherjrfan said:The S3 mag seems interesting and at $20 for two years ( admittedly did not check number of issues yet ) I'll probably bite.
For some reason several years back, for a very short time they had a lifetime subscription deal for not a lot of $$, so I jumped on it. They let it lapse and I emailed them about and been getting it non stop since.
Mostly tuner scene stuff, and kind of annoying amounts of scene jargon (ex: if you get annoyed by the guys on the hoonigan videos, thats what I relate some of the writing to) Not really much technical stuff but they (IMO) feature a variety of cool street/track cars, occasionally motorcycles, trucks, off road rigs. Event coverage, a couple new car reviews. Seems like a bunch of guys just sharing what they think is cool. Which is fine. Better than advertising and marketing driven crap.
I got an issue of S3 from Grip Royal. I flipped through it once and tossed it in the trash. I remember there was a "feature" on a 6th-gen Civic coupe that literally just had 10 degrees of camber on Diamond steel wheels painted with glow in the dark paint, and all the paint ground off the hood so it rusted. It then had 3 pages of this weird metaphysical discussion that was pretty much unrelated followed by a paragraph about the car.
I'm a fan of D'Sport. Aside from the female model segment that is just wasted space every month, it's got a lot of tech info and product testing and project cars. Also, about 60% of their features are tracked cars, so there's a lot of go, fair amounts of show. The worst parts are when they do R35 GT-R features, which due to the non-DIY nature of those cars, is pretty much cut and paste of "[Insert name] wanted his R35 different from everyone else's, so he sent it to AMS who built the engine to make [insert number] horsepower, then had ShepTrans build the transmission. He then lowered it on [expensive wheel brand]"
MulletTruck said:Jerry From LA said:Here at Autobooks-Aerobooks we sell mags that run up to $35.00 (Auto & Design).
I remember coming in and looking for the Roadkill Mag when they announced it being on the shelves, The gal behind the counter didnt even know they had a publication, They didnt seem to promote it through the distributors they were already using.
I was hoping they would gointo more detail on their builds and maybe do features on readers cars but it was just the same crap that they had on the Youtube and Motortrend on demand site. I felt it was just trying to get more subscriptions to the Motortrend channel
Tina told me Roadkill denied the mag's existence when they first inquired. Of course, this is the same company that provided an inquiry link that didn't work when Hot Rod Deluxe first came out.
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