Evolution, not revolution. It’s something of a mantra in motor racing circles, as teams refine and improve the breed. In the Motor Sport office this month, I caught myself quietly muttering it too, as the September issue began to take shape (I don’t think anyone heard me, which is probably just as well).
You see, we’ve made another tweak to the magazine as we strive to add greater depth and diversity. Nothing too dramatic, you understand, and certainly not a departure from tradition. In fact, you could describe it as an echo of times past.
Road cars always featured prominently in the ‘Green ’un’, thanks to the road tests and commentaries provided by the, er, independently-minded missives from editor Bill Boddy. He didn’t pull his punches when delivering a verdict. Today, we’ve continued to dip a toe into the industry waters thanks to the columns and tests of another forthright ex-editor, Andrew Frankel. But now we’ve dived back in head-first, with full commitment!
No more token efforts. Now the road car industry has its own section within the magazine, as Andrew guides us through the latest happenings, events and – most importantly – significant cars on the market. Each month, he’ll be cutting through the PR-speak to explain what is going on in the world of road cars: who is doing what, who is saying what – and what you should consider driving.
This month, Andrew kicks off by delivering his verdict on Goodwood’s first Moving Motor Show, finds out whether the new Mercedes-Benz SLS lives up to its classic ‘Gullwing’ forefather and bombards Bentley’s head man Dr Ulrich Eichorn for our new feature ‘20 Questions’.
And that’s not all. He’s been a busy boy. We also sent Andrew to McLaren to uncover exactly how Formula 1 thinking has influenced and shaped the stunning new MP4-12C road car. Want to know how motor racing brilliance can feed into the real world in the 21st century? Look no further than our cover story.
If you’re reading this and wondering what’s happened to the usual mix of racing stories past and present, never fear! Where else can you read about life in a Le Mans team, Ferrari P4 Can-Am cars, what Mika Häkkinen talks about over lunch, how F1 teams hit the track in Abu Dhabi – five days after racing at Interlagos, what Stuart Turner remembers about a colourful career in rallying… and why Nigel Roebuck found a kindred spirit in smokin’ daredevil Patrick Depailler?
You know the answer. So lock the door, turn off the phone and lose yourself in Motor Sport – a world with a proper sense of perspective.
And more than a cover…
Absolutley agree with Mr. Schultz. I read R & T religiously from the mid 60′s as a young boy ’til some time in the early 80′s. I remember with great fondness Rob Walker’s columns and Innes Ireland filling in now and then. It then became a glossier “Motor Trend”, and I gave it up.
I hope you haven’t been listening to “marketing experts” again.
Had a few days to digest the changes to Motor Sport.
The cover was suited to Autocar/Auto Express who centre on the new car business.Not what people buy Motor Sport for .
The seventies editon was probably the best ever and sums up what Motor Sport is all about.
A couple of pages by Andrew Frankel is sufficient and does not warrant Front cover mentions.Compare this cover with any of the last few years.Rember the name of the magazine is MOTOR SPORT .The magazine did not need tweaking.It has had enough of that in the past usually to it,s detriment as in this case
Gentlemen, please tread lightly when contemplating editorial changes to Motor Sport. MS is one of a very few magazines that I read from cover to cover. I am not opposed to Salon type articles so long as they are about racing cars, old or new. The March article in the August issue was fantastic. I would love to see more articles about the cars and discussions about how they were designed and built. The Lunch With articles are wonderful. We don’t need stories about new road cars. We can get those from the dozens of other car magazines out there. Remember you are special..
Well Motor Sport you’ve certainly prompted an interesting response, like many older readers i do recollect the cars that were tested and commentated on, for me its not what you neccessarily intend to do but how you intend to do this, and the extent with which you intend – maybe relating the article to motor sport is one way – maybe as i seem to recollect relating the cars to either extreme or idiosyncratic models – or just cars that were interesting and Top Gear aren’t going to butcher with that apalling programme- [is that a hint D?]
i would prefer what Nigel and others feel and comment on motor races that occured before their time – what Nigel’s perception is etc
but yea – always give things a try 1st and without hesitation still the best magazine availble
Stop, stop, stop! Please do not turn Motor Sport into Evo (great mag, though Evo is). Pages of esoteric road car stuff in Motor Sport have very limited appeal – it’s the racing that’s key.
You have a unique niche in the market – please don’t cock it up with this bad road car experiment !!!
WOW, from most of these comments you’d think you decided to change the magazine from about racing & interesting road cars, to, I don’t know, consumer reviews of 50 mpg econocars or even household appliances! The magazine is quite good, and I doubt a few more pages devoted to interesting road cars will dilute the current & historic racing articles. Based on what we hear in the podcasts, the team is very well grounded in what’s important. Sure, I don’t always agree with Frankel, but isn’t that what’s great about MOTORSPORT, the airing of opinions, damn the consequences?
Once again I comment John Saviano for his balanced view. It seems like nearly everybody else is having kittens.
sorry, commend not comment
I am willing to give the magazine a couple of issues to convince me, before I pronounce like Caesar :-)
MS is the only magazine I buy, so a little road car musings may be good for my knowledge-base.
Keep up the great work – it’s an outstanding magazine!
Have read this month’s issue cover-to-cover, and I have to agree with the general consensus on the whole road car coverage issue: it’s not what I expect from Motorsport Magazine, and shouldn’t be included.
Readers buy MS for motor racing. Simple. So leave road car test and reports to specialist publications, and instead, concentrate on what you’re so very good on.
(Oh, and put me down for “this month’s front cover was dreadful” as well!)
I have to follow the general concensus expressed in the range of comments posted above – Please, no more emphasis on road cars as I buy the magazine for its motor sport content and never read Mr Frankel’s road tests. There are plenty of motoring magazines devoted to road car news and tests and precious few devoted to the history of motor sport.
Also, please ditch Ms Skipper’s diary which appears to be something of an indulgence on the writer’s part.
PS This month’s cover is awful
So Damien SMith, can we expect a view from you on the above? I applaud your attempts to keep things fresh but renewal time is around the corner for me. I would like to know what you propose to do? We need to understand that the editorial team is listening.
It is not just a few hotheads on here, many of my friends are casual buyers and with the cover you chose they failed to even spot it on the newsstand…
It is certainly not for me to pontificate on this subject and when the Editor returns on Monday I’m sure he will be extremely interested in what you all have to say.
One thing I do know, and can safely say, is that the team does pay close attention to what our readers say. For many reasons, it’s important. We also have to remember that there are many commercial pressures to be considered.
It is not my place to get involved in policy but I do work for these guys and their passion, commitment and sincerity is beyond question.
Just how you please all the people all the time I have no idea. I guess that if I did, then I’d have a more important job by now!
RW
I support all the above comments but note that the main emphasis is for Motor Sport. Please will the Editorial Team remember that motoring and motor sport history has always been a mainstay of Motor Sport. Our esteemed Founder Editor William Boddy and also Doug Nye cover this area well but an increase in Doug Nye’s pages would be much appreciated.
I agree with Jeremy, more “skull-doug-ery” and more from my mate, Simon Taylor too!
Dear all,
Thank you for all your comments in the past couple of weeks. They have all been read, and read again, I can assure you. Few magazines offer a public forum on their own website to allow readers the chance to offer direct feedback – whether it is positive or negative – to the whole world. It’s something that we’re proud of. We are recognised for our independence and strong, opinionated editorial – and it is only right that we offer our readers the chance to have their say in response. Healthy stuff.
I was expecting some resistance, but I think some context is needed here to reassure those of you who are horrified by the expanded road car content.
Motor Sport is not about to neglect or desert its positioning as a magazine about racing, past and present. Everyone on my team here loves this sport and we are all very aware of the heritage we must live up to at MS. I believe we’ve done so successfully over the past couple of years, and I have no desire to undo all of that hard work.
At the same time, we cannot stand still. Magazine publishing is a tough business today (more than it has ever been in the past) and we are fortunate to be in a position where we have an owner who continues to invest in a title that could so easily have been lost more than once in the past decade.
The automotive world is changing fast and whether we like it or not, rapid developments will have a direct influence on our sport. Happily, our cover story is an example of the opposite taking place: racing expertise feeding directly back into a car for the road. How this has been achieved is totally in keeping with our brief to offer the wider picture of modern motor racing’s position in the real world.
But please be assured, we won’t be illustrating the cover with a road car every month. Each issue should offer great diversity of subject and the choice of cover should reflect that. Yes, we will surprise you from time to time (I hope), but more often than not I think over the course of a year we will please you.
As for the road car section, I am obviously aware that there are many very good road car magazines already on the shelves. But given our wide perspective and our history, why shouldn’t we have a voice in the industry? Especially as it is only a single section of a very big publication. Andrew previously had three pages of road car content per issue. He now has seven. As I said above, this is evolution, not revolution.
Please be assured the magazine is, and will remain, a magazine about motor racing. Of course. It should be a welcome indulgence, an ‘escape’ to be enjoyed. But at the same time, to ignore the wider industry and the world at large would be blinkered and would not be in keeping with the heritage built by WB and Jenks.
As for commercial considerations, of course we want to attract more advertisers. We need such support if the magazine is to have a healthy future. But commercial considerations have never driven content – and they never will under my watch.
If you’ve read this far, thank you! And please don’t lose faith – the magazine is not about to lose its unique perspective.
Best regards
Damien
Thank you, Damien, for taking the trouble to respond…I am relieved the cover is only a temporary aberration…! I have been an addict of the magazine since 1997, when Andrew Frankel took over as Editor, and have a lot of time for his writing. My passion is for the history of the sport particularly 50′s, 60′s and 70′s, and that is exactly why I buy the magazine, so whatever else happens please keep writing plenty about these years…..and the podcasts are great fun too…Well done to a great team..
Yes, a class act! Thank you for the response! This is why MS will continue thriving for a long time, perfect customer service and consideration for the reader.
Mario
Many thanks for the response Damien, i’m sure you and the team have the best interests of the magazine at heart and I look forward to future issues.
I am about to place my order for a new subscription – long overdue. Please don’t take this as a sign that the new focus has inspired it.
Thanks to everyone who’s taken the trouble to write in. Not sure I have a lot to add to what Damien has already said but as the chap who writes the section I’d like to confirm I have not been tasked with helping to turn MS into Evo, Autocar or anything else. So far as my brief from Damien is concerned, the road car section is exactly that: a section within a magazine whose first priority always has been and always will be the sport.
I agree with those who think what appears in the section should be strongly linked to racing, though with the industry poised on the edge of the greatest revolution since motorised personal transport was invented, I think it would be wrong to ignore it.
And I hope that those who have concerns will give it a few months to bed in, at least enough time to be reassured that this is not an attempt to turn MS into a road car mag by stealth. I think certain road cars have a part to play in MS as they have in the past, but as a supporting member of the cast, not in the starring role.
Thanks for responding to us, much appreciated.
This entire thread seems like a caricature, with a few notable exceptions, of English Drawing Room Stagnation. I live in NY and love each and every issue of MS as I have for years. I was in the publishing business before doing PR in the same arena. Magazines, if you hadn’t heard, must adapt new strategies to stay relevant and keep the bottom line from floating off into the distance. MS is a business, not a personal plaything. I enjoy everything about MS, read every last word every month, listen to the podcasts, and I especially enjoy reading the entire staff’s contributions. Simon, Nigel, every passionate one of you… GROW and prosper for our greater good.
‘tara
i share in my peers appreciation of you chaps taking the time out to respond- i have now re-read ms several times – still the best mag, and i don’t [won't] buy any old car mag so in hindsight keeping me somewhat abreast as to what is happening with road cars is not a bad move, now as a keen motorcyclist a bit about bikes… just joking chaps i get mcn for that
OK chaps, back to work now. All sorted.
DS may have been joking but since the title of the mag is Motor Sport rather than Motor Car Racing, I’d like to see a bit more coverage of bike racing as used to feature in the early 50′s with DSJs (Carozzinni ?) columns.
I believe that there was a publication called Motor Cycle Sport at one point but that it disappeared many years ago. There’s a whole world out there of real road racing history to be explored ( as well as contemporary road racing ) hence the chance to attract a significant number of old bikers many of whom would be in the 60 – 70 yr range and so have plenty of money to buy the watches advertised elsewhere in the mag !!.
Just checked the time on my mobile, must go :o)
One upon a time I was a Motor Sport purist. I collected proper hard copies from previous decades, and I just bought the magazine as an intrinsic part of any trip to the newsagent. No longer. These days I am far more inclined to flip through the latest edition before finally deciding what to spend my money on. Your competition is seriously stiff these days, and the more you dilute your core readership with banalities (Louisa Skipper, sorry and all that, but your pages might as well be printed on absorbent paper for all the good they are) and non-sporting matters. You also seem to be regurgitating the content of Octane almost verbatim of late (Penske and the Mercedes/Ilmor push-rod V8… shame on you).
You state that road car reviews were common back in the 1950s and 1960s, well a quick flip through my archive shows that you are perfectly correct. However, it also shows that the editorial content covering motor sport was a good few thousand words greater than it is today, so a couple of thousand covering a road car or two was no great matter. I usually enjoy Andrew Frankel’s articles, but they are definitely the last thing to be read.
It seems that once a decade or so Motor Sport gets all agitated about expanding its readership, tries to diversify or modernise (red cover, enough said), and loses its core subscribers and monthly newsagent purchasers. The money coming into the magazine goes down, the editorial content shrinks as a result, and the thing becomes a vicious circle until a year or so later someone has the gumption to refocus the magazine back onto its historical motorsport focus. Please, learn from the past (you are a magazine dealing with history in the large part, after all) and don’t do it again.
Having now digested the latest issue all I can say is as a ONE OFF experiment –interesting.But as the new format for the greatest motor SPORTING MAGAZINE no thanks! If this is the future then it will happen without this reader
The responses from Damien Smith and Andrew Frankel were welcome and I thank them for listening to readers comments. However, despite numerous adverse comments on Louisa Skipper’s Diary they offered no defense of the column or even a recognition that the diary was unpopular. Does this mean that the decision as to the future of the diary is out of their hands and that those critising it have been wasting their time? By the way have now seen the front cover, it is terrible!
G’day Ron,
It is a couple of pages. BIG DEAL. Why don’t you just staple them together and relax.
What do you want, editorial decisions by committee?
Thank you Damien and Andrew for so responding, and, as you so rightly and gently point out even offering such a public venue in the first place. J10′s comments above spot on in my book.
I have returned to MS after a long break and am pleased with the issues I have read so far. I like a mix of subject matter and feel there are road cars and even bikes that make appropriate subjects. Filling the mag with blow by blow accounts of races as in the old days would be daft. DSJ was catering to a readership that didnt have cable! I think you are on the right track, and consider variety as a key component.
I am already contracted to Motorsport if I like it or not with my current 24 Month Subscription.
I want to hear about racing drivers such as Mika for sure & will look forward to receiving the copy through my door. Nigel is often interesting & in my opinion took over from the gret void DSJ left after his passing.
As far as where else can I contact people in the Motorsport fraternity, I had a wonderful Patrick Tambay noticing a comment I left about a picture I had noticed on a friends site & I was perfect in guessing where this close up had been taken.
I pretended I was on my knees when Pat made a comment regarding how I believed he did not look as if he was pushing & he came straight back to say: “Relax: Practice, Quali, Race…Whoe Cared, it was the Monaco Grand Prix in a Ferrari & a dream come true”. Wrong tyres was the comical reson why he did not win. I think he knew that I also could suggest that he knew when he was on a corker & had the great courtesy to respond so efficiently (like GP Cars of today).
Simon O’Donovan