Cars Illustrated, 1959 to 1962

We recently found at the bottom of a box a good run of Sports Cars Illustrated, from the 50s and 60s. This was a British edition of an American magazine, which itself had started in 1955 and in 1961 rebranded itself as Car and Driver, and is still with us today.

The British version – the ones I’m describing here – first appeared in August 1957 and ran monthly for 2s. Then a funny thing happened – in summer 1959 it disappeared for a month before reappearing as, simply, Cars Illustrated. Same publisher, same editor, but with no mention at all as to why it had rebranded. The only clue we have is that it remained ‘Britain’s brightest motoring monthly’ but was now ‘for the discerning, sporting and family motorist’. It’s actually pretty good: there are lots of road tests and reports, and it has a clear international slant.  How long it ran for is unclear, but the copies in our box go up to June 1962, and we have others on our shelves already going up to August 1964. I suspect it didn’t last much longer – can anyone help?

The reason why I don’t think it lasted much longer is because of the competition. Let’s not worry about the weeklies (Autocar, Motor etc), because these probably chased a different reader. But for monthlies, there was already, for example, Sporting Motorist. In that same box we found just one copy of this, from May 1963, and it was a bit more at 3s, and with a slighter bigger format. This started in the 1950s as Autocourse, which became Autocourse and Sporting Motorist, and just Sporting Motorist by 1957. It turns out we have about thirty scattered copies of all of these titles. Ours is very glossy, but at that price it needed to be. Ours go up to April 1966 and I’ve seen the cover of a copy for October 1967, so it survived until at least then, but probably not much longer.

It seems that another upstart monthly had something to do with it. Small Car and Mini Owner appeared in October 1962. The strapline says it incorporated Sporting Driver, but that never existed. By 1965 this magazine had become CAR, which outraged with its tell-it-as-it-is writing and innovative photography. Going from strength to strength, it was probably this magazine alone which saw the others off.

Explaining all that took longer than I thought! What about the ads in Sports Cars Illustrated/Cars Illustrated? They really are special. We find full-pagers for the small-scale manufacturers, such as for the Tornado Talisman or the Berkeley. I’ve never seen the like before. We find smaller ads for the truly obscure, such as the Sabre (and I don’t mean the Reliant) and the Cheetah. There are ads for the new Austin-Healey (‘Frog-Eye’) Sprite, and some for high-end fare such as the Aston Martin DB Mk III and Daimler SP250. We also find ads for tuning shops, motor agents, oils, and, to close, a lovely colour one for the Lucas Screenjet electric screenwasher. Luxury!