What connects Vintage and Thoroughbred Car, a short-lived 1950s magazine, to the modern-day Classic Cars magazine?
The brief dip last time into the magazine Vintage and Veteran (V&V) enabled me to get a sense of the roots of the modern classic car magazine. I found out that V&V was a monthly specialist magazine for old-car enthusiasts, running from August 1956 to August 1979. I mentioned too that V&V emerged in 1956 as the successor to a previously short-lived magazine, Vintage and Thoroughbred Car, and this is where the story begins. This first magazine – let’s call it VTC – started in February 1953 as a monthly costing 1s 3d. Its first issue tells us how it was appearing with the ‘long-term wishes and support’ of the Vintage Sports Car Club. In the event the magazine ran until April 1956 (and at the Archive we have a full set). Coming out in the early 1950s, it was probably slightly ahead of the curve – hobbyist magazines really took off about five years later. VTC was always rather thin, but it’s editorial ratio was high.
There is a short gap between the demise of VTC and the first issue of V&V, which first appeared in August that year, and in V&V’s first issue it acknowledges ‘a great debt to our predecessor’, meaning VTC. The new magazine was edited by the third Lord Montagu (1926–2015), who made clear the connection between his new publishing venture and that of his father’s (the second Lord Montagu [1866–1929]), the magazine The Car Illustrated. This glossy society magazine ran from 1902 before fizzling out during the First World War.
In its 24-year run, V&V was an outlet for the writings of St John Nixon, Michael Ware, Michael Sedgwick, Michael Bowler, Ellen Broad and others. But it remained rather niche and (I imagine) low circulation, expiring in August 1979, when it was 60p (and therefore rather expensive).
But V&V lived on in a new magazine, Collector’s Car (incorporating Veteran and Vintage), first appearing in September 1979. Apart from the title referring to V&V, you’d hardly know there was a connection. Some personnel moved over, with Montagu as an editorial ‘consultant’, but the first issue has no editorial trying to explain what purpose the new magazine served and how it would fit in with existing ‘classic’ magazines. Collector’s Car lasted until September 1981 (and again, we have a full set).
The ’existing’ classic magazines? One was Thoroughbred and Classic Cars (T&CC), started in October 1973, and run on an altogether different scale of circulation to Collector’s Car. We know this because, when Collector’s Car ceased, it merged with T&CC, and V&V’s readers were invited to move over to the bigger rival with its circulation then of 90,000.
We all know T&CC – after all, it survives to this day. With its long-term rival Classic and Sports Car, it tapped into a new and lucrative hobbyist market: the classic car. But here’s a thing: when T&CC started (at which point it was 35p, so significantly more likely to be made as an impulse purchase) it had a different name: Classic Car. Note the singular. By October 1974 it has changed to the new title – Thoroughbred and Classic Cars – note the plural – and there’s an explanation for the name change in the final issue of the old title. Apparently, the Classic Car Club of America already had a publication called The Classic Car; and that club had strict rules for what defined a ‘classic car’ which didn’t fit with the British version’s wider remit. Now, whether there a few legal letters exchanged at the time, I do not know, but it seems the British publisher blinked first and changed its name to T&CC…
T&CC rationalised its title a little later. In June 1986, with the ‘Thoroughbred and’ part having already become rather smaller on the masthead, the magazine simply called itself Classic Cars. Curiously, those were the days when magazines were big and chunky and often had supplements. It seems whoever edited the supplement with the June 1986 edition hadn’t read the memo because this one was still called T&CC…
PS, we have a full set of T&CC/Classic Cars too!
