I just found out that European Car magazine is kaput.

Back in Nov. a friend gave me a subscription, and I had forgot about it. My wife was cleaning out a drawer and found the postcard from EC saying my friend gave me a years subscription, but I haven't seen a single issue.

I got on the publisher's website and went through the "contact us" link, and got a message that EC was no longer being published.

How sad.... I subscribed to it back in the 70's when it was Volkswagen greats and then it changed to VW & Porsche magazine. It started going down hill when it changed to European Car. A couple of years ago, I cancelled my subscription. I always liked the 914. The first VW & Porsche issue had an article called Type 4 power play. That article enticed me to build a 2.4 liter four banger. Then Marty from MSDS had an article a couple of years later in VW & Porsche in the early 80's called hidden power. That article enticed me to replace the big four with a six. I bought a cross bar motor mount, headers and a muffler from Marty back in the mid 80's, the rest is history.. Still have the car.

Perry & Steve -

It really P.O.'ed me when Hemmings ended their Sports & Exotics magazine too! It just seems that these publishers can't figure out how to navigate in both the print & digital world - especially for cars for the Boomer Generation!

I think that we'll see more of the car magazines which we all love, going away in coming years.

Of course they did the same thing with AM/FM radio by seling &/or reformatting all of the Oldies stations! The killer there was the" death" of the mother of all Oldies KERTH - K-Earth in LA, think Wolfman Jack & many other classiic DJs since the 1960s-70s era of our 914s!

I mean really - what can you play on the air with your expensive period correct radio in your 914 now!!??


Tom
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Yup, the old VW&Porsche Magazine. I subscribed through the 80s and 90s, and enjoyed watching the magazine evolve with me from Type 1s and 3s air-cooled, to water-cooled Rabbits, obtainable Audis, and such. Seemed like we had parallel journeys.

Then, like Steve, I tended to lose interest as time went on, simply because they started to focus on unobtainable exotics instead of the cars we can enjoy. prior issues piled up on the desk next to the bed, unread. I dropped my multi-decade subscription probably 3-4 years ago.

I still have old issues down in the basement somewhere, I'm sure I'd enjoy reading them again...if I had the time...

The good old days!!
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the old vw european car mag was one of the best back then for 914s We got the vast majority of our customers from it even though we advertised in excellence motor trend the panorama and road and track! We miss those days of mass catalog mailings We still have a good 210 page 914 catalog though!

Loved that mag!

Yup- I subscribed for years, years ago, then let it die when they stopped doing their own projects and went to covering mostly new cars. I still have the old editions where they did a 914 project.

I bought my first Audi S4 (the original 1992 model) based, in part, on an article they did on bargain used supercars. Loved that car.. so much so, in fact, I bought another (a 1995 S6, this time).

Yep, loved VW & Porsche but let my subscription lapse when it changed to European Cars and lost its focus on the stuff I was interested in (914s and to a lesser degree other VWs and Porsches). Great 914 content and almost every issue had something for me. That all changed when they broadened the focus. I imagine it is impossible to find a balance between a broad enough audience to make a magazine sustainable, yet focused enough to keep the audience's interest.

The infamous 914 special
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.....Was 1 of my Fav's.......back then!

It is really unfortunate that so many of our classic reads
have been killed off by the internet..
Real Commercial Printing is dead and you
can access stuff by PDF...
The next generation embraces this..
the old one laments it..

I remember when I first found VW & Porsche magazine, and then then I'd be MIA for 6 hrs whenever the new issue came out.

I still have a catalog you mailed me in 1991.

There's a 71 914-6 fully restored listed for $16,500. Where's that time machine when you want one...

Yes, I’m a hoarder..
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I had a subscription to European Car with a few issues left on it and they converted it to Automobile for the remainder of my issues.

Gone but not forgotten.

I remember when that issue came out, but at the time I was unfortunately dealing with raising a family & running my business, with no chance of getting a 2 seater 914 running again - so my poor 914 remained stored in my garage after being whacking in a parking structure just a couple of years 7 +/- 20K miles after a very expensive full rolling resto/rebuild - so there was nothing that I could "spend wisely" on my 914 back then!


After the 914 was whacked in May `85, my soon to be wife said that "[I} have to spend the insurance money on a car with a back seat, because we're starting a family!" We were wed in August, she had a miscarriage in December, then our daughter in June `87, & son Feb `89 - so she was not kidding!

So I'd gotten our 85 BMW 325e in May 85 - & it did have a back seat, but close power-to-weight & handling to the 914 - so I cheated a bit!


Then back in `88 it was stilll registered Non-Op then, & I'd roll it out of the garage monthly to run the engine for 15-20 minutes, until 92 when I completely mothballed the motor.

At the time of that article hitting my mailbox in May `88, we had an 11 month old daughter, had just bought our `88 Westfalia in April, & money was tight!

.

And I think that I still have old AA 914 catalogs back to 76, 77 or 78 - as well as old Performance Products, & some other Porsche Indy Parts Houses which are NLA - packed in a box somewhere!


Cheers!

Tom
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My favorite mag back in the day. I dropped all my other subs for European Car. I remember my first issue featured the Ferrari from the Thomas Crown Affair.

http://www.sportscardigest.com/friends-ste...-report-photos/

It was painted red for the movie. Someone obtained it and returned it to factory spec in the mag. I immediately sent in my sub money. About 10 years later I dropped it. Nothing but $60K and up cars and builds. Nothing for an old Scirocco or Alfa owner anymore. I have since moved on to Classic Motorsports.

https://classicmotorsports.com/


More info I found on the Ferrari : A 275 GTB/4 N.A.R.T. Spyder version was only available from a single American dealer, Luigi Chinetti. He asked Sergio Scaglietti and Enzo Ferrari to build a few Spyder, a convertible with no roof, versions of the 275 GTB/4, which he bought for approximately $8,000 each; N.A.R.T. stood for Chinetti's North American Racing Team. It was to be a custom run of 25 cars straight from Scaglietti, but because of low sales, just 10 were built in 1967 and 1968, making this one of the most valuable Ferraris.[7] The ten NART Spiders used chassis numbers 09437, 09751, 10139, 10219, 10249, 10453, 10691, 10709, 10749, and 11057.[8]

In August 2013, a 1967 275GTB/4 (chassis #10709), owned by the late Eddie Smith of Lexington, North Carolina, sold for US$27.5 million at auction in California.[9] This was a one owner car that, while was not driven daily, was driven on a regular basis. It had remained in the Smith Family for 45 years.[9]

The NART driven by Faye Dunaway in the 1968 film The Thomas Crown Affair, was serial number 09437, the first produced. It came second in its class in the 1967 12 Hours of Sebring before being repainted and used for the movie. In August 2005, it fetched $3.96 million at auction.

I was an early subscriber...

EC—really VW&Porsche—made a huge impression on me. It was that and Excellence that probably really got me into Porsche after so many years of broader-interest car magazines. So, definitely sad to see it go.

The art and magic of print is fading like vinyl. Get out and drive your cars while we still can...

Harry Beiker the yellow 914 conversion,,, they would hardly open the door in ca , but when he retired to oregon I delt with a bunch..

All I can say is that for those of us that like to open our mailboxes and see the fresh new magazine..... we reach in your pockets and subscribe... hopefully making it that the mags we read still have a substantial amount of paper subscriptions. Maybe they won’t be so quick to go all online only. Just renewed my excellence for another 3 yr term.

Good times Steve, I was introduced to VW Greats (Argus Publ.) magazine by a high school friend, to the editor Jay Amestoy. Jay took a liking to my 914 and the way I added go-fast tweaks to it. He sent me over to Irwindale Raceway (orig 1/4 mile track) for a day of drag racing my T4 turbo, Steve Reyes was the camera guy that day (www.Reyesontour.com)...the 914 turbo made it into the June 1976 issue. The magazine then became VW+Porsche, Gregg Brown editor/ Les Bidrawn photography, offices in West L.A. on Wilshire. All of my turbo creations 356, 914-4, 6, 911, 924, 928 were driven over to VW+Porsche offices for their critique. The straightaways of Sepulveda, Veteran and the 405 were a stones throw from Argus, and....Gregg once said "If Marty ever offers you a ride in his Porsche, he's a madman ". Old School "VW+Porsche" were Good times for sure , and thank you Steve for being an early customer of ours
Marty

Print is something of the past.

A uni friend of my wife a self-employed magazine writer, editor and publisher. Only 10% of her time is spent on print. 90% goes into online magazines and other social media. 4 yrs ago it was still 50/50.

The only way for magazines to survive is investing in software how to publish a magazine online.

Menno

And good on ya!





Man, I remember those cars and those stories—and spent a lot of time with Greg and Les in later years, in all sorts of crazy places.




I dunno. The above sounds very 2005. Or 2010. Or 2015. Print ain't dead, but it is changing. I wouldn't want to be on the newsstand anymore. The waste is huge, and the sell-through tanked after about 2007-2009. I can tell you—having watched the metrics on the digital version of Panorama when PCA launched that—that digital magazines have pitiful engagement. Some years ago, one of the very big publishers experimented with two digital versions of the same magazine: One a straight PDF replica of the magazine, the other all-singing, all-dancing with videos, multiple images (with captions), and other bonus content. The latter required more people...and saw no more engagement than the straight PDF replica. Guess which one I suggested PCA try? The engagement was quite small, but the cost was so low that it made sense to make it available for the small number of people who used it. My guess is they really liked it, though the minutes in use were also small. Perhaps that has improved, but I doubt it. Most magazine publishers will tell you the magazine in digital form was DOA.

If one can get paid well to write content online, awesome. I know very few who do. Most online car sites pay $25~ per item, if anything. Some pay more, but typically only when they are backed by corporate making money on…print. Or ads. Or a bigger picture of some kind. In the meantime, I still believe in print when it comes to magazines. Even I have converted to digital novels, but when it comes to a premium reading experience with photos and layouts, I still think print is unmatched. And if it's beautiful enough to keep? A tab in my browser just ain't the same.

Content is decisively moving electronic, but I think a lot of that is becoming self-inflicted. Wired magazine, for example, is one i've subscirbed to since nearly its inception. I really like the content, and enjoy having paper to handle in certain scenario.

However, they have inexorably increased their online presence, but in a lot of ways at the expense of the hardcopy. My Wired physical magazine is shrinking, seemingly each month, with references to additional content online. And I just got an email notification that I have a free subscription online, encouraging me to move there for content. It's inevitable that the hardcopy will go away, at which point I will cancel my subscription.

Grassroots Motorsports, on the other hand, is still going strong, with excellent hardcopy content and referrals to online links for more details. I think their magazine is actually growing, not shrinking. Each time I see a deal on subscriptions I'll bite; I think I'm somewhere in the range of 2023 for expiration.

European Car died not because of online competition, it died because its content was becoming dry, boring, redundant, and irrelevant. See Car & Driver , Motor Trend, and AutoWeek since most of the good guys got fired/left. Yawn.

Yeah, online content is the king, but there's really nothing like a well-run hardcopy magazine with top-notch content.

But that's just me. Apparently I'm an outlier.