This is sad news. Sport Compact Car, one of the most authoritative and well-written magazines about small engines and tuning tips for compact cars has been killed off by its parent company, Source Interlink, along with Truck Trend, with 115 employees cut loose. It’s one of the few import scene titles out there that had informative articles about the import scene, with no fluff about bikini girls and rap albums to distract from its core content. They even did the occasional story about an old school ride. This comes hot on the heels of Source Interlink discontinuing Turbo magazine as well, and rumor has it that more are on the chopping block. This kind of thing makes us uneasy, being small-time publishers still in the process of starting a new magazine.
Luckily, we are a small, independent operation. That means we don’t have the overhead that a giant company like Source Interlink does, but it also means we don’t have the marketing and distribution channels they do. And also, we are truly fortunate to have loyal readers that love nostalgic cars and don’t see them as the latest fad. But we definitely need advertisers and subscribers, so please help us spread the word. And as always, feel free to give us your feedback, good or bad, so we can improve the mag.
In any case, we are very sad to see SCC go the way of the dodo, and wish their staff the best of luck. Sport Compact Car‘s February 2009 issue will be its last.
[Autoblog]
While I know you guys feel some kinship with SCC, their contribution to dissemination of actual information was rather small. I remember when they were under McMullen-Argus. As soon as Saavedra left, any shred of integrity went out the window. I have never seen a publication so overtly influenced by the advertising department. No product was ever discussed, reviewed, or featured in the magazine which did not have a multi thousand dollar advertising contract behind it. Vehicle features were nothing more than lists of parts provided by the paying advertisers, and specifically omitting any parts which were provided by companies that were not advertisers. There was never any discussion of how parts were adapted to work with each other, nothing about tuning, never any testing with a definitive or measurable result, really nothing more than a lists of pieces from advertisers. But to be fair, none of the other publications, even those claiming to be “Roots” or “Tuner” are doing anything different, so SCC was no different than all the rest.
I am very sad to hear this. SCC was one of my top magazines to read. I felt it was the top of the heap when it came to the tuner community. I still have the first issue they ever did, back when the only compacts that mattered where custom. I didn’t even know Turbo had gotten the axe too. I am really really depressed, two of my favorite mags are gone, it is a sad day for the tuner industry.
Old media is dying one publication at a time.
That sucks… I still remember one of my favorite articles from them about the Japanese wangan scene a few years ago. Very well written. Of course they had other great articles but i remember that article the most and it will always be one of my favorite reads…
When SCC first started they had some old school people around and did some nice articles that related to what I was driving. In 1994 they had photos of both my 510 and 2000 Roadster in their “fine” magazine which has always sorta made me a loyal reader. Still have several new copies of those issues :-). Still read it to this day……….
Aw, man that is so sucky. I still have some real real old issues that are as fat as a phone books.
I left the last of my original run,”JNC.com” stickers under the wiper of a cool ’83 Accord that the person obviously cared about….Can we get more?… A neighbor of mine has a 260Z that hasn’t moved since I’ve lived here (7+ years), and though the car is Not For Sale, he said he’d let me put a JNC sticker on it!
Duh! click on that “Shop” button, and prayers will be Answered!……
Currently the “JNC.com” stickers are sold out. Ver. 2 is still available. There are currently no plans to bring ver. 1 (JNC.com) back, but who knows…if there’s enough of a demand we’ll consider it. Or, maybe we’ll make a larger ver. 2…
With the recent surge in popularity of older Japanese cars, I think that JNC magazine should be able to stick around for a little while.
As for the stickers, I personally like the ver.1 sticker over the ver.2 stickers.
It’s really a sad day for import gearheads. Guys like Coleman, Jaquoit, and Kojima really made SCC shine. Same can be said about Turbo. Back in the days they used to do writeups on anything that had a turbo attached to it, from Grand Nationals to backyard brewed Civics. Those magazines will truly be missed.
gotta go with Oyaji Gaijin on this. i haven’t read it in years. the dream team did make scc shine, but that’s a distant memory, so i haven’t felt any loss or sadness for years either
Oyaji Gaijin, thats total crap, have you even read that magazine in the last 10 years? Or are you thinking of another mag? They’ve lost several advertisers in the past from printing articles that proved certain performance products did nothing (big brake upgrades for instance). They’re the ones who have been pushing the boundaries in testing methods and scientific anaylsis of performance modifications, no other import mag even comes close. They dyno test almost every new sport compact of interest when the review them, they’ve been using track telemetry data logging for years now, and they publish more test data then any other car mag I’ve seen and their tech articles are about as in depth as you can get without cracking open an engneering text. If anything, their sales may have been negatively affected by their tech work as its too heady for the average reader. In the early years they were more into stereos and show stuff but they’ve been pretty focus on real performance for the last 10 years at least, maybe you should take another look at some of their issues written in this century.
This is nothing short of a catastrophe for the import performance world.