“Horseless carriage—automobile carriage—automatic carriage—autocar. All these names have been used to designate the latest production of the ingenuity of man, the motor-drive road carriage, irrespective of whether steam, electricity, hot air, or petroleum be the motive power.” That’s how the first-ever issue of Autocar, dated November 2, 1895, begins. The blue-chip British car mag has made its entire archive free to access online until September 24, making now the perfect time to check it out and absorb some contextual car knowledge from the last 129 years.
You’ll find a sign-up link on Autocar’s site where you just have to provide a name and email address, then opt in or out of emails, but no credit card number’s required. From there, you’re in. Classy move, Autocar—it could have easily made us put payment details in and counted on us forgetting to cancel, but the mag’s publishers are taking the high road with this little promo, which I appreciate. Looks like access will expire at 5 p.m. London time next Tuesday (chewsday, innit?), so sign up before then if you want to see what car media looked like 100 years ago.
Once you open the archive, you’re presented with a simple spread of dated covers. Then you can flip through the print mags, which appear to have been preserved in their entirety (ads included), like they’re PDFs.
If you find any particularly cool nuggets, please come back and tell us about them in our comment section here!
At random, I opened the November 1978 issue and was amused to learn about that era’s idea of restomodding. There’s a short blurb about an Albany, a British car that was built around 1905, modernized to then-current specs with a Triumph Spitfire engine and transmission with the rear axle and some suspension from a Minor 1000. I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that people were trying to extend the life of old car designs back then too, but seeing it in the context of a 46-year-old article was pretty funny.
I’m sure there are far more interesting bits of knowledge, in-period advertisements, and imagery from Autocar’s last century-plus of publishing. Finding them can be your new procrastination station for the next few days.
Got a note for the author? Leave a comment or email him at andrew.collins@thedrive.com.