Современное автомобилестроение. Сахарова Н.С. - 100 стр.

articles on cars and how to drive them, and many on maintenance. It must be
remembered that few drivers knew anything about the motor car that they had just
bought.
    Later, the great annual trade and social occasion was the London Motor Show at
Olympia, then Earls Court, and now at The National Exhibition Centre in
Birmingham. The showguides produced by magazines such as The Motor were often
the size of a small telephone directory, there being so much editorial and advertising
to be crammed in.
    The first magazine wholly devoted to motor racing was The Brooklands Gazette.
This magazine quickly broadened its sports coverage from just the track at
Weybridge and was renamed Motor Sport in 1924. At the time, the major motoring
weekly magazines gave a lot of space to competition of all kinds and were like the
Monte Carlo Rally and the 24-hour race at Le Mans.
    The most competitive years for the press were to come after the Second World
War. Many of the smaller publishing houses were swallowed up and a few big rival
groups took over. Many specialist magazines came into being and chiselled away
from their traditional rivals, fringe readers and advertising. The do-it-yourself brigade
emerged very strongly with magazines such as Practical Motorist (founded as long
ago as 1934). Even though repair and maintenance material is available from
specialist handbooks there are still plenty of people who want a monthly magazine to
help them with the upkeep of their motor car. Whatever type of magazine it is, top of
the list for popularity in the contents has consistently been road-test reports on new
models. Road testing has become a precise and highly technical activity.
    More recently a number of publishers have put out magazines for the enthusiast
for the older car. The Vintage and Thoroughbred Car, first published in 1953, was
soon changed to Veteran and Vintage Magazine edited by the present Lord Montagu,
and later this magazine was taken over by the largest circulation journal of its type.
thoroughbred and Classic Cars, which is now into its second decade.
    Today only a few enthusiasts can afford the car they would really like to own.
This was exactly the situation at the very beginning. Today’s motoring magazines
such as Fast Lane with their colourful descriptions, dramatic action pictures and road
tests of the futuristic and astronomically expensive turbo this, or turbo that, ‘beam’
their readers briefly into a different exotic world of motoring. Nowadays we have
something like 140 British Automotive magazines and that does not include many
hundreds of publications put out by a thousand or so motor clubs. the National Motor
Museum recognises the importance of motoring magazines and with the help of
Business Press International has mounted a special audiovisual programme on the
subject. The information contained within magazines such as the ones mentioned
here and many others, is now of great interest to the present-day journalist, to the
motoring author and to the enthusiast. Reference libraries such as the one at Beaulieu
have grown up to serve these collectors and reporters.

  Exercise 1. Read the text and say how many motoring magazines there existed in
Europe in 1920s. - 1970s.

100