the demise of australian automotive magazines,

[driftke70]

i tend to agree, my fav aus mag is motor magazine.

[Course_Out]

As has been said teh print media has been dying a slow death for a whiel now, and I for one am pretty sad about it. I remember when Speed came out it really forced the other magazines to try a bit harder, then when it left Auto Salon sort of picked up the ball, with high quality photography and interestign features.

The main issue with the online media I would suggest is a lack of exclusivity. Back in the day I remember heading down to the newsagent to pick up Hot4's because a mate's car was on the cover (it was rice, but this was a long time ago, lol). It was exciting and there was a fair amount of pride in the fact that the car had been deemed good enough to be worth the cover and a 6 pages spread. Now anyone can put up a blog and have a heap of people see there car (or opinion), regardless of whether it is shit or not.

I guess Speedhunters are one avenue that maintains quality in its content (for the most part) and I personally hope that that trend spreads so that the good quality cars and events will still get the recognition they deserve

[Dom86]

I've been subscribed to HPI or PI now, for about 2 and a 1/2 years, and the mag has definately gone down hill since the new editors, the old editors were pretty bad too, but at least they were entertaining.
The main thing that shits me atm about PI is the really stale articals.
For instants the second last issue (Dec 09) had an arctical on the last round of the WA 09 drift championship in April, this month there is an artical on the JP Super lap from last year and this years is just about to start.
The other thing is the grammatical errors. I'll be the first to admit that I'm crap at "English", so if I'm picking mistakes, there is something seriously wrong.

On the others, Autosalon has always been too rice, but they do have some great cars at times.
Zoom just doesn't grab me because I've usually read it all in PI, haven't really looked at on recently.
Fast 4's is a little too fast and furious.
What keeps me going back for more PI is it's the best overall mag we have, and the feature cars are mostly owner built and most importanly driven and raced, not just built to look good.

[Frak]

I also have to agree, I think Motor is probably the pick of Aust mags.

Zoom was originally started by a friend of mine, Julian Edgar, if you get the first few years of zoom whilst he was editor, you will find the magazine quite good. Julian also went on to write 21st Century Performance(I also get acknowledgment at the front of the book ) Later Julian was ousted from the magazine in the Great Martin Donnon vs Julian Edgar battle, Martin took over as tech editor and Julian went on to do Autospeed, which up till lately was quite good, Julian has taken a job else where and due to money flow from Autospeed has cut back on content.


HPI used to be very good, when it first started I really enjoyed reading tests of standard or MILDLY modified import cars, now all the cars are autosalon spec

I too also enjoyed Speed magazine.

[racsov]

been a long time fan of hpi since mid 30 issues, it went downhill once ellis stepped down, still subscrive but its getting pretty annoying how lame they are and how their event coverage is 6 months behind.

drift battle was the best magazine ever.

[sotiros86]

Once Ben Ellis and Alexi Smith left the business it went down hill. Whilst i know Alexi still writes articles, its just not the same as seeing him try to dodgy his exhaust on the "GO-180" so that he could pass rego haha. I also noticed the terrible grammatical errors in many of the magazines, and whilst i may not be fantastic at literature, it is extremely mind boggling when you read a sentence that makes no sense.


Long gone are the days of Drift Battle and good ol' HPI, and now we have one more to add to the list: Autosalon.

Now what will i read when im taking a shit???? Womens Weekly?

[(OO)SKYLINE(OO)]

As in ppl stop buying the magazine, which lead them to stop production?

[Beau]

yer.. my Trueno was suppose to be in the Issue #86.. Oh wellz..

get on cause anyone can start a blog/e-zine

[xsoarerx]

drift battle was the best out of all of them, i used to get HPI as well untill i was given a years subscription a few years back. i went from looking foward to getting it to almost throwing it out cuz i thought as much of it as a avon catalog or that RACQ road ahead mag.

personally not being a fan of the typical imports i got sick of reading about them. theres only so many Rb20det turbo build ups, only so many boring silvia's, only so many supra's with 2jz's with big turbo's hannging off making 600kw's and running STD suspenion i can take.

save your money, get japanese mags. Gworks, Drift Tengoku, Vip style, even Kei car mags shit over anything we have here in OZ.

[Robo86]

yer drift battle was cool! enjoyed it