Sunday, October 10, 2010

Road & Track, Fifties Style

September, 1954—From the Contents page cover blurb: With these heady ingredients—a German Porsche Super, a Swedish Hasselblad camera, and a bright California wall—Photographer Rolofson has created a masterful "piece-de-resistance" for our September cover.

November, 1956—From the Contents page cover blurb: Through the bright flowered parks of Turin, home of Italy's great "carozzerias," drive some of the world's most advanced automobiles. Pictured on our November cover is Pinin Farina's "Super-Flow" Alfa Romeo (page 31) with transparent front fenders of plastic.

June, 1958—From the Contents page cover blurb: The French Citroen ID-19 is posed in a Riviera-like setting in California's Pacific Palisades. Adding her charms to the scene is lovely Mme. Colette Garnier, also of Paris. The Ektachrome cover is by Raph Poole.

M Y   C O L L E C T I O N — Perusing a few cartons of old car magazines I've had packed away, I found several years of Road & Track published in the 1950s. Scanned for your viewing pleasure, lol, you'll find issues posted here from 1954, '56 and '58. The covers are so elegantly stark compared with today's over-designed travesties, it's really an eye opener. 

I've designed magazines in the past, fashion magazines for Fairchild Publications in NYC, yachting publications for Embassy publications, and books of all sorts for GPP, Lyons and Falcon, so I feel I'm qualified to call the font-heavy, graphics-heavy, photoshop-filter-heavy covers of today a total mess. They are mostly a tribute to poorly understood software and a need to "one-up" the recent graphics grad sitting next to you, rather than any sort of aesthetic understanding of the subject matter. No matter what publication I worked for in my almost 30 year career, I almost always found that the majority of people in the art department were always working towards the next job, never really understanding their current publication and it's requirements. 

The back pages are just as interesting to me as the front covers. Jaguar frequently bought the back cover of R&T and you'll find two of their full page ads here, a full color studio shot, complete with haute couture and a live feline, and a black-and-white exterior shot using examples of the "typical" Jaguar owner; a handsome airline pilot, a doctor, and various stereotypical well-to-do people, with a chauffeur bringing up the rear. You'll also see an illustrated two-color ad for the then-new Triumph TR-2, an example of an almost simplistically enlarged newspaper ad for the venerable British marque.

For a bit more information on the beyond-fabulous Alfa "Super-Flow" click here. It doesn't seem to have survived to the present day, but there were others in the series that did.

9 comments:

  1. I thought I recognized my old doctor standing next to that jag, rofl

    Agree, magazines have gotten a bit font happy. My grandkids like me to paint Rolling Stone mag covers for them, Lady Gaga and Britney. The last one I did of BS found me grumbling...."I feel like a damn sign painter here"..... not that there is anything wrong with sign painters. lol

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  2. Off-topic: Do you remember the cartoonist Phil Garner? He became Phillipa Garner and finally Pippa Garner. She still contributes to the magazines today, I don't know if it's Road & Track. She is a book waiting to be written - along with Liz Carmichael of Dale fame.

    http://www.erikawanenmacher.com/webpics%20copy/website%20copy/mm/stationery/VertPic/pippa.gif

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  3. She illustrates the Ms Goodwrench monthly feature in Car and Driver. Never knew the backstory!

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  4. thank you for these. The Jaguar ad with the typical owners is the one I was trying to describe a few days ago. I still love that ad. It's simple and believable and it works. Can you imagine how self-concious it would be if it were done now. What a difference half a century can make!

    Paul, NYC

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  5. Road & Track was Stan Mott and the Cyclops and Frank and Troise.

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  6. Paul: as soon as I saw it today i thought it must be the one you mentioned. cool! i would actually love to do some really simple new ads for Jaguar. let the car do the talking, and keep everything else starkly simple. i'm guessing that won't be their direction.

    the Cyclops! I have to admit i never got the humor as a kid, but I always thought the car was cute. i think they built an actual life-sized Cyclops for their office lobby once.

    what I'm looking for is an issue of R&T from the late '60s when they stretched a 911E into a 4 door. I think it was done by a company named Trout and Barnes or something like that. It really wasn't bad looking. I'm sure I have it somewhere. I suppose I could google it. what can't you google these days! I even made my blog "googlable" a few weeks ago.

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  7. Casey, thanks for scanning and posting these lovely covers! What a stark contrast to the type-laden covers of today! Wow! And if it weren't bad enough, the type on the covers screams out ridiculous lines trying the entice you to buy the magazine and read all about it. Disgusting! I like YOUR covers. :)

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  8. I well remember the stretched 911 -- it was a very nice medium/dark green and I think it had white walls. I had that issue (as I did every issue between about 1962 and a year ago or so. The monthly magazines interest me less and less -- they seem to focus on things that I don't care anything about -- the best handling, super car shootout, racing, etc. I still sometimes buy some of the British old car mags -- no one seems to carry Popular Classics anymore and that's too bad.

    Paul, NYC

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  9. Paul: I feel exactly the same as you do about the monthly magazines. For most of my life I bought all four, sometimes five at time, every month. Now, I might buy one, usually C&D or Automobile, or R&T if I've missed Peter Egan for a few months, but most months I don't buy any. They're just not writing about anything I really care about anymore. I find myself much more interested in reading about old cars, so I'll buy every issue of Hemmings Classics and Collectible Automobile. Next time you're perusingy a british glossy magazine about older cars, look for Nigel's byline, Nigel Boothman!

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