You Can Read All 129 Years Of Autocar Magazine For Free

Photo: Niels de Wit / Wikimedia Commons

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Autocar is one of the oldest automotive publications on the planet, first putting ink to paper in 1895. The British weekly car magazine announced on Thursday that its digital archive will be open to the masses free of charge for the next five days. I highly recommend that every enthusiast take the opportunity to immerse themselves in nearly 130 years of vehicular history.

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The Autocar digital archive was made publicly accessible in 2023, but only for subscribers. Such an extensive collection of editorial content allows a window back to past opinions. For example, the magazine covers the Ford Fiesta’s British debut in July 1976, just after America’s bicentennial. A column separate from the launch assessed the risky change of course Ford was making:

“Now there is evidence that they moved too soon, and that while the American public may well have told the researchers that they wanted small economical cars at the height of the publicity about the lack of petrol and the patriotic need to conserve, what they really wanted was still the large, comfortable, heavy, chromed status symbols.”

The sentiment could be read as a distant prediction of SUVs and pickup trucks being dominant in the United States. However, it was likely a reference to the previous dominance of luxury sedans… and pickup trucks. The desire for economic cars was believed to be just a fad caused by the 1973 oil crisis. The column cites the prospects that drilling oil beneath the North Sea would bring fuel prices tumbling down, making the Fiesta and every other compact two-door marketplace pariahs.

Nearly 50 years later, the prediction came to fruition, with Ford ending production of the Fiesta in 2023. The archive as a whole is fantastic, but I do have complaints. The UI has a lot of room for improvement, with the search function being clunky and rudimentary. Also, the text with the magazine scans isn’t machine-readable; instead, they opt for plain text displayed beneath the pages. But again, take advantage of the free trial before it ends on September 24.