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Newsstands reflect evolving car culture

BY ROYAL FORD

The Boston Globe

The local magazine rack has long been a perfect litmus test of evolving culture: sports, entertainment, fashion, food and wine, and, yes, the car culture.

A recent afternoon's browse revealed a rich Petri dish of car cultures, mixing ethnicity, social mores, music, chemistry, fashion, electronic wizardry, and video games -- and plenty of cars.

Martin L. Schorr, a pioneer in automotive magazines, recalls a simpler time, back in the 1960s and '70s, when monthly magazines juggled a flow of appealing covers that simply but successfully reached, at different times, drag race enthusiasts, hot rodders, street racers, and fans of muscle cars such as the Pontiac GTO.

No more.

Consider the cover of the latest issue of RIDES magazine, which bills itself as ``The illest car magazine ever.''

Perched provocatively on the hood of a Lamborghini Murcielago is Foxy Brown, with a headline proclaiming that ``Hip-hop's car queen whips all challengers.''


She's not wearing much, but what's she's wearing is branded and costly and is pointedly identified inside the magazine: a La Perla top, Gucci skirt, Sergio Rossi boots, and a necklace by Salvatore Ferragamo. That's linkage for ya.

The cover also promises articles billed as ''All-Star Rims'' (that's fancy wheels), ''Goldberg Jackhammers his classics'' (he's a pro wrestler), and ''Snowboarder Boogie.''

Import Racermagazine features ''Turbo Killers'' from Nissan, Mitsubishi, and Subaru -- and features what would seem to be an unlikely mating of a Scion tC with a powerplant offering 533 horsepower. Lowrider magazine gives us ''Players Ball -- 13 pimped out rides.'' FastFour shows the global drift of magazines with an article titled ''Aussie Drift Nation.'' The magazine mph promises to tell ''How to Snag a Killer Used Mazda RX-7.'' European Car brings us hot rods from across the pond with its ''Project Car Issue,'' featuring stories on how to turn European cars into hot rods for American roads.

Gone are the days when lines like ''Bored, stroked, four-barrel carburetor, or chopped and channeled'' were the big lure. Gone are the days I recall sitting with a cousin and a friend listening to a 33 1/3 rpm record scratch out sounds of great launches at drag strips.

Now we've got nitrous systems for more power (a nitrous oxide injection system that boosts the power output of the engine), electronic control units, computer programs, and ''cheats'' to beat the electronic limits manufacturers impose on their cars. We've got electronic racing games so real you lean as your car careens across the screen.

''We've gone from the greasy guy working in his garage to the guy who does reprogramming,'' said Schorr, today the president of Florida-based PMPR Inc., a media relations, marketing, and communications company specializing in high-performance and luxury vehicles.


Today, there are women on the mastheads of the magazines, women on the pages (some of them legitimate car buffs, others used as eye candy in a frightening throwback). Asians, African Americans, and Latinos figure prominently in what was a white male world.

Import Racer, for instance, offers this month a profile of Carmen Silva, the owner of S3 Tuning in Orlando where, it says, she got into speed after her boys became racers. ''Momma gonna knock you out,'' promises the headline.

''Get it or be gone'' seems to be the message on everything from cool clothes to hot wheels to nitrous systems.

Sport Compact Car has an ad showing us Kai, an Asian enthusiast, standing with Leon, a Buddy Holly-looking geek type.


''Whose Civic do you think is more trick?'' the ad asks, then explains that Kai shopped better, saved $599, and spent that on a nitrous system, leaving poor young Leon in his black horn-rimmed glasses at the last light.

''It's a very strange, fragmented marketplace,'' said Schorr, who added that, knowing what he knows about the magazine business, and the plethora of ads packing most of these niche products, lots of money is changing hands.