The November 1958 issue of Mechanix Illustrated previewed the new '59 cars, and their famous "Father of the Road Test" Tom McCahill tested the "batwing" Impala Sport Sedan. The cover features a glued-on piece touting this road test, almost an early Post-It. I carefully folded it back to show [almost] the entire cover. MI was printed on low-end paper stock, just a step above newsprint. It has yellowed and is much more brittle than usual magazine stock. For that reason, I had to be careful not to split the binding when I scanned the pages, so they're not as flat and as well-scanned as I usually try to show on my blog. This magazine is truly from another era though, so I think it's a good idea to post them anyway.
The first two spreads of the Impala roadtest. Tom McCahill was known for his very colorful writing style, using out-of-this-world hyperbole, double entendres and puns whenever possible. Layout-wise, this article broke one of MY cardinal sins in publishing. The story jumped from these first 4 pages, which is fine with longer pieces, but it was jumped to four separate pages in the back of the book: a paragraph here, a paragraph there.
When I was laying out newspapers, I insisted that once a story "jumped" to a continuation page, it ended on that page. In any article, you're lucky if the writing is interesting enough to jump the first time. If you force your reader to jump to 4 more pages, especially with just an additional paragraph on each jump page, I can almost guarantee 99% of readers won't finish reading. Of course, McCahill was colorful enough to MAYBE get the reader to the end, but I wouldn't count on it.
Elsewhere in this issue, the '59 new cars were previewed:
• For the Wiki on 1959, including births/deaths, Academy Awards, Nobel Prizes.
• For the Wiki on 1959 television history.
• For an interesting website on the current events of 1959, click here. It includes prices of popular items too.
