Retro Cars Magazine is no more.

Well, the rumours had been around for a little while, and then this post on retro-rides confirmed it:

Future Publishing has announced that it is to cease publication of Retro Cars magazine with immediate effect. The current issue on sale will be the last and issue 43 will not be printed.

Editor Paul Wager and Features Editor Richard Hammond will be leaving the company on Friday, November 17. Art Editor Mark Field will be moving to Windows Vista magazine.

We would like to take the opportunity to thank everyone who has made the magazine such fun to work on over the past few years. We had produced a large part of issue 43 before the decision was taken and subject to management approval we hope to post the completed pages at www.retrocarsmag.co.uk in due course.

Any announcement of this news which you may already have seen elsewhere yesterday will have been the result of my private email to contributors being posted to a forum.

Paul Wager
Editor,

I loved it when it first came out. It really seemed to capture the spirit of a whole new scene, and the associated show at Santa Pod every year was a massive highlight for me. But over the last six months or so the mag started to go downhill - too many race cars, expensive/classic-rather-than-retro motors, factual blunders and shallow technical depth. The final nail in the coffin for me was an issue that featured the possible restarting of MGF manufacture under new Chinese ownership. I mean, sure it's an interesting story, but what's it doing taking up a third of the main news page in a retro-car magazine? Bizarre.

So what happens now? We shall see. The forthcoming online Retro Driver magazine sounds incredibly promising, written and created by people with passion, knowledge and experience. And as for the show, well, there's a Retro-Rides show coming in August 2007. I'll be putting details on here when it's all a bit clearer. So far it sounds like it's going to be a hell of an event!