The End

—So ends my nearly 55-year subscription to Car and Driver magazine.
It began in college, but after Car and Driver claimed Pontiac’s G-T-O was better than Ferrari’s G-T-O (1964).
Which got the effete sportscar junkies all upset, although I think the Ferrari G-T-O was totally unsuited to American driving.
That comparison also made Car and Driver notable. It started in 1955 as Sports Cars Illustrated.
The Pontiac G-T-O Car and Driver tested was a ringer. It had the 421 cubic-inch high-output motor, hot-rodded to the Moon. The standard G-T-O Pontiac was 389 cubic-inches, also hot-rodded.
My introduction to C&D began in the Houghton College laundromat when I picked up a discarded Car and Driver. It was more interesting than my Hot Rod magazines, which seemed aimed at high-schoolers.
Car and Driver was more erudite. It also avoided posturing that European engineering was superior. Suddenly Chevy’s SmallBlock got the attention it deserved. NASCAR was reported. European performance was attractive, but so was American performance.
A lot happened over those 55 years. C&D gave away a Sunoco Blue Z/28 Camaro much like the Penske/Donohue Trans Am Camaros. Pontiac’s overhead-cam six was installed into an XKE Jaguar.
C&D tried to get 200 mph out of a Firebird, but developed a flying machine. It wrecked in the desert, flipping numerous times. (Its driver survived thanks to roll-cage protection.)
Car and Driver brought BMW out of the doldrums. Its 2002 Tii could leave a bellowing 455 TransAm Firebird in the dust.
Head honchos came-and-went. Most notable was David E. Davis, Jr., followed by Leon Mandel — there were others between Davis and Mandel whose names I forget. —Editing a magazine has to be madness.
Another was Csaba Csere (“Chubba-Chedda”), head honcho from 1993 through 2008.
Long-time C&D writer (and one-time head honcho) Brock Yates, with the magazine since 1964 — hired by Davis — left in disgust when Csere didn’t wanna pay his retainer. Yates died in 2016, and Davis in 2011, but not before founding a C&D challenger, Automobile Magazine in 1986 — still being published.
I used to read Car and Driver and Road and Track cover-to-cover. I gave up Road and Track years ago. It wasn’t the good read Car and Driver was.
One-by-one the good writers at C&D disappeared. Best was Patrick Bedard, a former Chrysler engineer who could really write. (He raced the Indy-500 and crashed horribly — he survived.)
Plus my automotive enthusiasm wained as I got older. I ain’t Mario Andretti, and American driving conditions are no longer attractive.
“Them are 200-mph tires!” my niece’s ex-husband bragged, pointing to the tires on his mother-in-law’s Taurus.
“And where, pray tell, do you propose to do 200 mph?” I asked. “And you ain’t gonna get 200 mph out of a V6 Taurus.
You’ll be lucky if you can get 70 or 80. Traffic is so congested you might be crawling.”
In south FL I see Ferraris, Lambos, and Masers. HELLO! Rubber laid at stoplights, then 25-30 mph max. Their drivers are just profiling. “Look what I got!”
I became my paternal grandmother. Performance is for the car to start, and avoid repair.
No way do I chase trains in a Porsche. 200 mph; but where? Expressways became parking-lots.
Car and Driver, with its obsession for automotive performance, is no longer relevant. My iPhone, and this laptop, replaced pedal-to-the-metal.
It’s ironic my final issue has a Corvette on the cover. How many ‘Vettes have graced the cover over 55 years? Corvette sells magazines.
And it’s the new mid-engine ‘Vette. We been awaiting a mid-engine Corvette since the seventies.

• Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati; all hyper-expensive Italian supercars.
• I’m a lifelong railfan. I chase and photograph trains.