Earlier this year we reported on the shut down of Modified magazine, but now it seems that was not the end of the restructuring at parent company Source Interlink. Last week news broke that the company was ceasing publication of several more auto enthusiast titles, including Import Tuner, Honda Tuning, Popular Hot Rodding, Rod & Custom and others as the company streamlines its line up of publications.
While seeing the loss of any car magazine is never a good thing, titles like Popular Hot Rodding and Rod & Custom had been around since the ’50s and ’60s, making them true icons in the industry. Import Tuner and Honda Tuning came later, but their impact to the younger generation of enthusiasts is no less significant.
We will greatly miss flipping through these magazines every month and send our best wishes to all the employees and contributors affected by this news.
Mike Garrett
Instagram: speedhunters_mike
mike@speedhunters.com
OFFICIAL SPEEDHUNTERS SUPPLIERS
That is AWFUL. I really hope that they will get recovered...here in Poland, a huge tuning magazine "GT" also got cancelled like one year or so ago. And it was monthly magazine, now i got two new and each was...once for a few months...And it is not like old one anymore...Very sad .
I'm gonna miss those magazines... I'll admit, I haven't flipped through one of those magazines in quite some time, considering the abundance of material online and the website we're all on right now, but they conjure up memories of a simpler time. I remember going through early high school and late middle school flipping through these pages reading and aspiring to build something that would be featured in any one of those mags. Simpler times.. So sad to see them pass
The only car magazine I have bought in the past 6 years has been Octane. Great cars. Great WRITING. Great content all around. All others have become bastions for the advert sellers with "journalists" who can barely craft a narrative.
The real people hurt by this are the models. Where oh where are they going to find work now?
Derelict Have you tried Evo? That's well worth a read. Or it is if you can get past the inevitable Porsche Pandering. But then that's everywhere these days.
Man such a shame.These magazines played such a huge part in my love of cars growing up. I'd spend hours looking through them. I even recently fell in love with Honda Tuning again... I work in a secure facility so we can't really have our phones out and our computers are pretty locked down with an almost custom version of IE so a lot of modern websites do not even work right. Including this one. So I rediscovered magazines. Almost subscribed to these to.
I really hope that Evo never ceases publication.
@Beany It's up to you and people like you to keep them alive.
Ahh, Import Tuner, I remember when my car made the cover... ...on Need for Speed Underground.
When I was younger (not terribly long ago) I bought Rod & Custom, Custom Rodder, and Street Rodder religiously. I have drawers full of at least several years worth of each. It was sad to see Custom Rodder go after such a short spurt, but I'd reckoned never to see the day when a title like Rod & Custom became history. Last one I bought was two months ago - guess I should have read the editorials more, perhaps I would have caught whiff... Rest In Pages!
If FastFord ever goes I dont know what I'll do
@Brandon Anthony gotta start buying this magazine, as long as it's alive, just to have something to show to others in a few years, these car magazines are dying out...
i Just went through my magazine stack and found 450 mags from back in 2001 to date
Turbo
Import tunner
honda tuning
Super Street
Moddified
Sport compact
Some Option mags too
sadly im forced to let them go
@Elsupa If you were near me I'd take them. I hope you're not just going to toss them. Someone on craigslist will take them easily. Or just bring them to a car meet with FREE signs and leave them in the open. A lot of people eat up older car magazines.
mrwicksy Derelict
I believe Evo and Octane are sister magazines. Octane for old school, Evo for new school.
I got saddened when Sport Compact Car issues got canned. Luckily Jalopnik kind of fills that hole for me.
In the Dutch version of Octane we've put Speedhunter material as well, Dino's photo's were bought by the Dutch Chief Editor. It's sad to see evergreens go, but sites like Speedhunters and magazines like Octane are the new evergreens.
very sad . i remember picking up my first issue of the first Import Tuner with Francine Dee and the Feels Good body civic Hatch.
It was my first day in College at san diego state university. (1998) It has made a very big impact on my years as a car junkie. From civic hatches, to european cars, back to jdm, to drifiting...and now i am back at classics japanese cars.
Import tuner is a great magazine (next to super street)..and will always have a place on my book shelves.
TheRickster they found a new home since the PURGE
TheRickster I remember that Import tuner cover! This article brings back many wonderful memories
Is Rod & CUstom going online or is it gone completely? It's an institution.
I hope Grassroots Motorsports never gets cancelled. And it probably won't, as old farts do like their rags. Subscribed for years to come, so you've got nothing on me!!
Always a shame to see magazines get cancelled. There's nothing like sitting on the couch with a cool drink and a magazine in hand.
j_tso mrwicksy Derelict I think you're right, but there's a bit of an overlap. Evo regularly test iconic historic rally cars and racecars and the like, and they have retrospective tests with, say, all the M3s in. That sort of thing.
The only problem I have is that they're more than likely gonna have whatever new Porsche is out win the Car Of The Year.
Last year was a mad one, for instance. They get all the testers to rank the cars in the COTY and then average the scores. For whatever reason a pair of the Porsche-owning staff both decided to rank the Ferrari in 5th when everyone else put it no lower than third (and most of them ranked it best or second). Predictably enough, Porsche won as a result of this.
Other than this usual bias (a bit like, for the Brit mountain bikers here, if you read MBR then Specialized always win) I rate the magazine's content extremely highly. And the unadorned Subscriber's Cover is lovely too.
R.I.P Honda Tuning :'(
This is really a blow below the belt so to speak, I like reading Imprt Tuner, I guess I'll only be reading speedhunters for now then
wow this sucks to hear. What is left now for the tuning crowd after IT is gone? Is it just super street and D-sport?
It is very very! sad to know that these magazines will no longer be available. I believe and agree with this article that was written, I will leave this here:
http://stickydiljoe.com/2014/06/02/we-failed-you/
Modified shuts down, they send me Import Tuner. Import Tuner shuts down they send me..... _________? Playboy subscription perhaps?
Oh shite =(
Speedhunters, make a magazine. Theres nothing even left. Just super street. I need imports and babes on the cover, its so corny but idk what i'd do without it.
Perhaps SpeedHunters should come out with a print version?
...another one bites the dust...
Sad news when any mag goes down. Brit readers... We have to protect our heritage too... I never miss a copy of Custom Car and never will. You should do the same.
I used to drive a PHDM EK4 Civic SiR and I got my most of my modding ideas from Honda Tuning back then. I'll be sad to see it go.
demzo_BRG Whilst I agree with Joe's sentiment in part, I don't think the enthusiast failed the magazines. It's the other way around, there are plenty of well run and presented magazines out there, the more traditional publishing houses became complacent and didn't give the readers what they needed. People voted with their wallets.
zephoto Haha, you'll get Super Street.
NYporkdept MotoIQ is good. Mike Kojima and Dave Coleman do articles for them and they have a few of the old SCC projects in their fleet
DSport, MotoIQ, and Speedhunters are what I read now
You should give Grassroots Motorsports a try - no "rice" (including stance), no JDM hype, no-nonsense approach to fast cars and even faster driving.
I second grassroots motorsports.....function all day long
Unfortunately the ways of today makes it even harder for such publications to survive mainstream like that.
Living in the UK, I used to subscribe to Import Tuner and Super Street when I was into the Japanese culture scene all the way up-to 2007/08........this was about the time of the decline of anything like this here in the UK.
So, I've been out of touch with these mags for a while, but Iike Max Power and Redline Magazine, I grew up with these mags, so its always sad to see them drown away.
Hopefully they can keep it going online? I know that struggles to pay the bills, but it had a feel good vibe to it.
THIS IS GETTING KINDA OLD!!
I first subscribed to Sport Compact Car, only to have them kill it, and Turbo. Two magazines that actually taught you about cars and how stuff works. Great writing for actual car guys.
...then my subscription went over to Modified Magazine, that started out kinda horrible, like a cheap copy of Super Street; later turing into exactly what SCC was all about. Now its gone and I get Import Tuner in the mail. Import Tuner, the magazine that is more about eye candy than cars. Also does video game features.... not my style.
But I guess it doesn't matter, as its gone now too.
Seriously, do I need to come down there and manage this magazine company??
-Angry subscriber.
I just read a great editorial piece by J. Wooley, editor of S3 magazine entitled "Print is Not Dead" in their latest issue. Great read and truly an eye opening point of view on the automotive magazine industry. I recommend it to anyone who has an opinion on the current environment of automotive print.
Ultimately enthusiast and advertisers (the industry) have to collectively decide if supporting print publications is worth it, or if receiving information/advertising through cheaper/free channels like Instagram/Facebook/blogs/websites is the future and the avenue that is preferred. Don't be surprised to see magazines go if enthusiast aren't buying subscriptions, and aren't supporting the advertisers who support those magazines.
Although it's unfortunate to see these publications go, especially Honda Tuning, hopefully source interlink will be able to better focus their resources on reviving SuperStreet to a level that will bring back subscriptions and command the advertising prices they ask for. Combined with the move to digital channels, I think that magazines like S3, Dsport, grassroots, etc have really taken a bite out of what Source Interlink was doing for so many years.
I get hit up for advertising in a magazine almost every week, and I always ask for the latest copy before making a decision. There is still value in advertising with a high quality magazine, and there are still a few titles out there left.
Bottom line for the way I make a business decision to support a publication: Do I really enjoy reading this mag, and would I pay to read this mag every month? Answer yes, then support Print.
It is bad that we actually have lost 12 more publications this time around, not just these four, along with Modified and Mini Truckin' that were killed off earlier in the year. Whats worse than you guys not receiving the magazines that you have subscribed to, please keep in mind that approx. 6000 people lost their jobs with Source Interlink Distribution that was shut down last week. Lets face it, all of these mags are owned by the same corp. which is the Mc Donalds of car magazines basically. Most of em have been lacking great content for years and are full of advertisements. Don't get me wrong, there are still good articles in plenty of them and I buy a lot of these mags often. Maybe this is a good time for some more private mags to start up and get some real grassroots driven content to these mags instead of the advertisement driven articles that we are used to seing?
bmxatv10 We can but dream. So much content these days is reliant on sponsorship and the like, both in magazines and online. It would take a rather wealthy benefactor to effectively self-fund a magazine and I'd suggest that was unlikely.
The hand of sponsorship is never far from most publications - even here. Consider the Goldrush Rally article on here that reads like a huge plug for Airlift and Kleers and the like. Obviously these things are whats needed to keep Speedhunters afloat (plus of course the backing of EA) so we can't complain too much but provided they keep the sponsorship at a minimum I'll keep reading. The most egregious example was Evo, the magazine I rate so highly as mentioned below. There was one particular issue a few years back in which Shell bought practically every available advertising space, so about a third of the pages of the magazine had either an advert or an Advertisement Feature on them. It was bonkers.
mrwicksy bmxatv10 "so we can't complain too much but provided they keep the sponsorship at a minimum I'll keep reading."
My sentiments exactly.
Speedhunters_Bryn demzo_BRG Precisely Bryn. One only needs to look at the shambles that is Future Publishing over here in the UK (I'm sure you're familiar with what they're doing...) to see what's happening throughout the industry as far as complacency is concerned. Future will soon become the past.
bmxatv10 Dude, they don't have nearly enough advertisments, and thats why they got canned. Sport Compact Car got in trouble when it started producing fact based tuning information that a sponsor didn't like. Facts are not nearly important as pleasing the people paying for the advertisment, and Source Interlink/Primemedia and whoever else doesn't care about the content, they only care about revenue and numbers. Modified, SCC, Turbo... they hit the topics I like. Now I'm left with speedhunters.
Poor management.
JamesWalper bmxatv10 Yeah, they got canned because they are "probably" paying their CEO's too much and they are not making any profit. You are definitely correct about these mags not printing facts though!
RickoJSuave I third Grassroots Motorsports. I especially like their annual $20XX challenge where competitors build a car using only $20xx as their build budget (not counting the cost of the car).
RickoJSuave I third Grassroots Motorsports. I especially like their annual $20XX challenge where competitors build a car using only $20xx as their build budget.