Performance Car Mag R.i.p.

It was with some sadness that I learned this week of the demise of the re-born Performance Car Magazine, a UK title that started again in February 2008. Coming after the closure of the innovative Internet-based Drivers Republic late last year, this means we UK car enthusiasts are a bit restricted in our choice of reading matter.

I don’t understand how the UK market can support three publications devoted to Porsche, but evidently just one true enthusiast monthly for the general market. Anyway, Performance car started promisingly in Issue 1 with the Clio 197 cup on the cover and promising to concentrate on the cheaper affordable cult car kind of stuff that EVO had of late been neglecting.

I bought the first few issues and on the whole, they were good. However, before long, as always the rot set in and PC started to settle lazily into concentrating on that typical 35-55k price bracket. This meant road tests of Porsche Caymans, Z4 35s, and Audi S4s and buyer guides to Ferrari 360s and Porsche 996s, alienating the mag from the kind of cult car fan base it had appeared to be aiming for. Without generalizing, the kind of people who buy Audi S4s, BMW Z4s, M3 cabs (Wads excepted!!), and Caymans when they are new generally don’t tend to read car mags. They tend to be financial advisers, mortgage brokers, and company boss types who want the proper badge.

It is very telling that in its two years, PC never bothered to road test a Mitsibushi EVO of any description, or shamefully even the Nissan GTR. They did however start repeating many articles of the type that had been in EVO and CAR.

They then totally lost it for me, when in one diesel hot hatch test, they suggested that the Golf GTD was a better buy than the MK6 GTI. Sorry guys, but a diesel hot hatch will never deliver the buzz you get from spanking a good petrol motor, which the GTI most certainly is!

So another car mag went for that middle ground mopped up by CAR, EVO, and Autocar and failed. The thing is, Autocar gets by because they are the only weekly that properly road tests cars of every price bracket. EVO has come in for some flak, including from me, but has, in its defense, always been brilliant at covering the supercars, but also remembering the cheap stuff. Now strengthened with the return of Richard Meaden and Chris Harris on board it has a formidable lineup of writers.

The car survives, I think because it has a long history of well-written slightly left-field thinking articles and has developed that sort of guardian reader-type following since its 1970s heyday.