MotorTrend

MotorTrend turns 75 years old this year, and I wanted to mark the occasion by sending every one of you a 24-karat championship ring, studded with diamonds and with the numerals 7 and 5 stamped on the side. My request somehow got lost in our CFO’s inbox. Odd how that works. So I have nothing to offer but our sincerest thanks for sticking with us for all these years, especially you subscribers. I hear from a few you, mostly via email and social media these days. A lot of the feedback has been complaints about how our coverage has pivoted to EVs or that we developed some sort of new EV agenda. That’s both right and wrong. Twenty years ago, my mentor, Angus MacKenzie, joined MotorTrend as editor-in-chief. He still pens some…

50 JUNE/JULY/AUGUST 1974 PRICE: $0.75 By the summer of ’74, the OPEC oil embargo was over and fuel prices were stabilizing, though inflation and recession still loomed large. While car companies were thinking small, Americans were cautiously turning back to larger cars, and MotorTrend’s coverage reflected this dichotomy. We highlighted what we considered the best of the “common sense” cars, vehicles like the Opel Manta, Buick Apollo, Toyota Celica, and Mercury Comet. But we also trumpeted the arrival of V-8 power for the Ford Mustang II and reported on an upcoming eight-cylinder Chevy Vega, which, in light of the Vega’s emerging problems, would launch as the Chevrolet Monza. We tested full-size luxury cars from Cadillac, Chrysler, and Lincoln, but we also took an in-depth look at Mercedes-Benz and the challenge it posed to traditional…

When MotorTrend began 75 years ago, the first self-driving car(t) concept was 464 years old. Yep, centuries before the first combustion- or electric-propelled vehicles, Leonardo da Vinci drew plans for a self-propelled cart powered by gears and springs, with preprogrammed steering. A quarter century before our first issue, a car was driven by remote control through New York City (ultimately crashing). Then at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, the GM-sponsored Futurama exhibit depicted platoons of cars driving themselves along interstate highways embedded with magnets (a concept the General eventually demonstrated in 1997). Despite all this autonomous history, our coverage of the topic stuck largely to news reporting. That’s because we’re automotive enthusiasts, and we largely view self-driving cars as anathema to automotive enthusiasm. But with terms like “artificial intelligence” and “neural…

The Icon of Icons As a longtime MotorTrend reader, I applaud your selection of the Chevrolet Corvette as the most iconic vehicle ever built (Spring 2024). I’ve owned a 1977 C3 model and now a 2016 C7 Stingray. Both were purchased new. I have greatly enjoyed driving both and can attest to their entertainment value. Neither car was modified to maintain their market value—funny enough, in your article you show a C2 with six taillights? I’ve seen many such models here in California with six lamps, but they were all modified. I don’t believe Chevrolet ever officially offered such an option. I’m confused by this picture being attached to your superb article without any explanation. Please enlighten me! Donald Rinker Castro Valley, California Just a quick note to tell you I enjoyed your new…

As Los Angeles sparkled under cloudless skies that summer of 1949, Robert E. “Pete” Petersen pondered a problem. Hot Rod, the magazine the 22-year-old former Hollywood PR man had founded 18 months earlier with nothing more than a $400 loan—and a hunch that Southern California’s fizzing love affair with the automobile might be the start of something big—was now selling 85,000 copies a month, and the circulation numbers looked as if they’d just keep on rising. Hot Rod was attracting advertising dollars from the speed shops and the small manufacturers that made the go-fast parts and accessories the magazine’s enthusiastic readers wanted. But Detroit wouldn’t give it a dime. Detroit was awash with money as America’s postwar economy shifted into high gear and consumers junked the sensible Depression-era sedans and coupes…

MotorTrend didn’t invent automotive performance testing as we know it today. We cede credit for that to Autocar (née The Autocar) in Europe and to Tom” McCahill (1907–1975) stateside, for first wielding a handheld stopwatch and clicking off the 0–60 times of cars he bought, begged, or borrowed. He published his results in Mechanix Illustrated magazine beginning in February 1946, and car lovers everywhere were quickly addicted to that performance measure. We may have inherited the metric, but we like to think MotorTrend has helped improve the metrology, advancing the science of objective vehicle testing at numerous points throughout our 75-year history. In the Beginning … We performed no testing on our first cover subject vehicle, the Kurtis Sport Car—at least not until 2019 when MotorTrend purchased that fully restored car (0–60…