Hi there,

I'm thinking about subscribing to a car magazine that should focus mainly on sportscars and covers the full range from sporty hothatches to supercars. The market in germany is rather dull in that segment, with a magazine called "Sport Auto" being the main option. The choice of topics is okayish (focuses too much on tuner cars rather than stock performance cars, imho, but it's bearable), but the writing is a real problem. It's soo god-awful, you wouldn't believe it. And as language is my job and I am loving it too much, I just can't tolerate seeing it abused for pages on end.

So, I figure, maybe a car magazine from the UK would make me much happier? But which one? I'm thinking about "evo magazine" or "TopGear", but having not read either one, I can't really decide which to choose. One thing that puts me off from "TopGear" is that at £87 it would cost me almost twice as much as "evo", which is only £48.20 (god knows how Top Gear calculates for overseas/european subscribers).

So, I'd really appreciate to hear opinions of people who know them both, or can point me to other magazines I might not have heard of.

Regards,

Linsen

Topgear is a decent magazine, infact I have this months sitting on my desk Covers a wide range of vehicles in pretty much every catagory, and is entertaining to read while being informative.

Evo magazine I don't know much about, focuses a lot more on tuner cars than standard ones as far as I know, whereas Topgear tends to focus on stock new cars.

Evo is quite good, but it covers more on 'sensible' cars then TG does. TG has many more features, such as JC's column and other interesting things, but is mainly to do with supercars, rather than 'sensible cars'. Personally, I prefer TG, but seeing as it's twice as expesive, I don't think it's worth it.

Other mags include autocar (the road testing version of autosport) which is quite good, but is out weekly so is smaller and might cost more. The best magazine if you're looking for sensible car buyuing advice would be What Car? magazine. It's very informative but quite formal, whereas the other magazies I've mentioned are a bit more 'fun'. Autocar is about £1.20 a week, and What Car? is about £3.50 a month.

EDIT: Evo isn't a tuner magazine. (if you mean this one? http://www.evo.co.uk/)

Ignore me, that isn't the mag I was thinking of

Evo gets my vote.

Yeah, Evo here. Car is too dull car orientated. Topgear is just rubbish (apart from one or two columns). Evo is a nice balance. Although their technical explanations (especially their attempts at explaining torque) are more often wrong than right. Octane is nasty, cheaply done, and full of inaccuracies.

Max Power Ftw!!!!!!1111!!!!

@danowat: Only serious proposals, please.

Seems like evo is it, so far.

Evo is great, only car mag I buy, but as Tristan says, their technical column seems so untechnical and dumbed down... you're better off asking us.

A tip, you can subscribe to the evo newsletter and get half (well, more like a quarter) of the mag sent to you in an email every month. Means I only buy it if I need some airplane reading material.

I think Autocar is what you're looking for, it's a more serious magazine which covers the entire automotive world but with more focus on sports cars and some fun articles and several good columns and the news pages are good for keeping up to date. It does good group tests and the best road tests in the business. Top Gear is more general entertainment, much like the TV program laugh at the funny bits but don't take any of it too seriously. Evo focuses mainly on the top end of the sports and super car market, cars you'll never be able to afford but fun reading, it's rather more of a glossy magazine with pretty pictures than Autocar and as Tristan said fairly hopeless attempts at technical articles that aren't worth reading.

As for the classic magazines Octane is a rather glossy classic car magazine with no real depth and always a bit of a disappointment when there's no meat behind it. Classic and Sports Car is the best with good articles and broad span of articles. If your interested in historic racing Motorsport is brilliant.

@Bob: I don't think I can buy evo on an issue by issue basis, as I reckon, they don't ship single issues to the mainland. So it's either full subscription or nothing. Also, I enjoy sundays on the sofa with a real Magazine in my hands to leaf through, rather than just reading something on the screen.

@ajp: Actually, the way you describe it, it seems Autocar is actually not what I'm looking for. There are pretty decent german magazines that are more service-oriented and feature a wide range of cars, but I'm looking more for something that focuses on high performance cars with the occasional hot hatch thrown in. Glossy and pretty pictures sounds about right for me.

And as for the technical stuff: On this forum I usually already get the impression that I can't really follow too technical explanations. Partly because of the language barrier and partly because of a lack of technical insight in general, so I think I might as well skip the technical articles anyways.

I think I'm going with evo.

Regards,

Linsen

You shouldn't be disappointed.

Retro Ford Is the Don Gr8 mag As Iv got Escort Mk1 Rs2000 Sitting in the garage.

But Get Evo Mag Top Gear Is Just about them Lot and the car they Are Driving Evo's Many Things

Evo gets my vote. Top Gear just has way to many advets >.>

Also, Performance BMW is a brilliant read to

Edit: Jordan, love the sig. Oh wait, no I don't.

EVO is brilliant IMO. In terms of portraying the thrill of driving, I find it unrivaled. The Trackday COTY issues were always favorites, but they did away with them?

Anyway, the only downside is how Expensive it is here in the US. Ah well, you can't have it all.

PS.... american car mags suck balls...

TBH, Max Power and Redline have both changed dramatically recently, Redline focuses almost entirely on performance now, 10second 1/4mile street legal cars etc.
Max Power, still focuses on the tuner side of things, but not so much the neons etc, more subtle stuff. Redline has pretty much eradicated (glamour etc.) models from the magazine, and Max Power have cut back dramatically too.

However, I'd suggest subscribing to EVO magazine. (Or Performance French Car, if thats your thing )

Autosport - for motorsport, there is nothing better.

Autocar - for all your road car news, its basically the same as autosport in terms of quality.

Quote from titchster :

TBH, Max Power and Redline have both changed dramatically recently, Redline focuses almost entirely on performance now, 10second 1/4mile street legal cars etc.
Max Power, still focuses on the tuner side of things, but not so much the neons etc, more subtle stuff. Redline has pretty much eradicated (glamour etc.) models from the magazine, and Max Power have cut back dramatically too.

However, I'd suggest subscribing to EVO magazine. (Or Performance French Car, if thats your thing )

But there is no getting away from the fact that Max Power and Redline are magazines for the motoring moron, and complete dunces. Those who find reading a struggle would like both. A retard, with various mental and physic disabilities, kept alive only by a machine would choose to use these magazines ONLY has an anal hygiene product (i.e. wipe his arse on it).

I really like EVO and Car, for the photography Car can be absolutely amazing and they have some great articles.

With regards to Redline and Max Power I'd say that Max Power is as bad as ever, but Redline is almost a tolerable read (if it's free). When I used to work at Halfords, it would be the only one of the "tuner" magazines I could bring myself to read, and they really do seem to be trying to go for function over form with their car selection.

You won't be wanting that years Max Power subscription I bought you for xmas then, Tristy?

Quote from J@tko :

Autocar is about £1.20 a week, and What Car? is about £3.50 a month.

Don't know when you last bought an issue of Autocar, but last time I bought one it was about £2.50. It is one of the best available, though. EVO is the pick of the monthly mags. Nicely written, good photography, nicely put together.

I've never liked Autocar. There is very little news and a lot of speculation. The writers seem to come up with cars that they want companies to make, and then report about them as if they're real. A lot of their exclusive pictures are simply promo pictures from other manufacturers photoshopped to feature a new car.

Quote from spookthehamster :

I've never liked Autocar. There is very little news and a lot of speculation. The writers seem to come up with cars that they want companies to make, and then report about them as if they're real. A lot of their exclusive pictures are simply promo pictures from other manufacturers photoshopped to feature a new car.

They're very often right, though. I was a subscriber for a few years. Yes, they do have a lot of "Autocar Images" which are essentially photoshopped cars that are only rumours, but they also validate that sort of speculation when a car is officially unveiled and does actually look like the one they came up with. They're good at guestimating specifications too. Perhaps not actual news reporting, but it's not complete fiction, and they are open about what's real and what's not, though they weren't always.

/me likes topgear magazine