[GTO]

Am hearing that all of the Indian car magazines are in big, big trouble due to Covid-19. All of them have begun salary cuts, layoffs & branch closures. The smaller mags are either on the verge of closure and / or their parent organisations are unwilling to fund them anymore.

Expect to see a couple end up in the graveyard.

[Axe77]

Originally Posted by GTO

In another 10 years, they'll be a relic. We won't have any car magazines on sale.

That's quite likely I agree. Online content is where its at now. And sites like team-bhp.com or similar would be the go to source for such information. Not only are they a source of information they are also interactive insofar as people can real time ask questions to both the community as well as even the official reviewers of vehicles.

The other big area to my mind is video content via youtube channels and similar. I am a big fan of Powerdrift for the quality of their content and I am surprised more people aren't trying to break into that space. The current auto mags are the most logical players in this space as they have already been producing a lot of video content via their channel associations and otherwise too. But for most part they're not a patch on the quality that PD produces.

Finally, I think written blogs and articles and video reviews each have their own pros and place in terms of what an enthusiast wants to consume.

What would be ideal is a confluence of the two. For instance, I would be interested to see a lot more video reviews as an extension of what Team BHP does (BHPian Karan561 produces some nice video reviews but that's an outlier. The platform officially hasn't pursued this space yet). Similarly I may be interested in seeing more written stuff from what the likes of powerdrift folks do. Shumi for instance is an excellent 2 wheels reviewer, both in written and video format. Those kind of content generators would add tremendous value to any platform in straddling both worlds.

[avishar]

The other big area to my mind is video content via Youtube channels and similar. I am a big fan of Powerdrift for the quality of their content and I am surprised more people aren't trying to break into that space.

The space which will need breaking into is the vernacular video content space. Snazzy, effects filled, English-language reviews like the ones from Powerdrift do get a fair amount of views from their subscribers but what Indian car buyers are looking for is a guy speaking Hindi and just explaining every feature of the car.

Hindi is just an example, the same extends for languages like Malayalam, Telegu, Tamil, Marathi, Bengali etc. Vernacular reviews who might not tell you if the chassis is stiffer than the last gen but can explain the infotainment system, eyes-closed. And these guys have lakhs of subsribers and infact often I like watching their videos to get a quick overview of their cars. Sometimes one can watch an Autocar review and come out of it not learning much. Standard shots, cliched phrases, but who will explain to me the detailed break-up of the variants.

For eg, if you go the Motoroids channel you will find their highest viewerships are from videos in which they just explain things in Hindi.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQJ...rt=p&flow=grid


Sometime back I came across this Malayalam channel which specializes in truck reviews!

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRB...w_TQVLhsP8up7Q


Which sounds like a pretty clever idea, because somebody needs to review trucks also, isnt it. There are 1 million commercial vehicles sold in India, but there are very few auto journos who would want to drive the latest Ashok Leyland Dost or can keep a long-term Tata Signa truck. But there are people who are doing so. A combination of cheap internet and fast internet!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr95hKitWrI

I find such reviews fascinating.

[SmartCat]

Jio Platforms is offering digital editions of all car magazines for free. You can access them either via JioNews.com website or Jio News app
https://jionews.com/magazines/category/Automotive/1

[WhiteSierra]

When we were kids and teenagers, every month we used to go to Walden Bookshop at Greenlands, Hyderabad. We used to buy toys, gaming CDs, music CDs for home and cars, etc, but my favorite thing to do is to stop by magazine section and pick up F1 magazine. It used to cost 300 or 350 rupees or so back then. I used to read about my favorite racer Mika Hakkinen and world's number 1 F1 racer Michael Schumacher interviews, their rivalry on track and many more. Later came the iceman Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso rivalry. Those V12 engines and the cars were best Formula 1 cars ever. Back in those days F1 racing was about the true potential of the racer and the car, now the scene changed drastically with stricter rules, downsized engines, etc.

We also used to buy Autocar India and Overdrive magazines. Dad likes cars and reading in general, so he buys lots of books and magazines. My favorite thing in these magazines are car posters. I used to collect them, take them to school and show them to my friends. We all used to discuss about cars and only cars. I was the one who injected this car madness to all my friends at school, out of which many people turned out to be true enthusiasts.
my second favorite thing is to go to the last few pages of the book, see all the different car brands, their models, their variants, specifications and prices. I used to wonder why ex-showroom prices of each city like delhi, bombay, hyderabad, bangalore, madras were different if it is a same car.

I honestly stopped looking at automobile magazines after following Team-BHP many years ago, I think there is lot of information on this forum compared to all the automobile magazines put together!

[mr_freakky]

Originally Posted by SmartCat

Jio Platforms is offering digital editions of all car magazines for free. You can access them either via JioNews.com website or Jio News app
https://jionews.com/magazines/category/Automotive/1

Attachment 2052805

Jio used to offer all these magazines for free right from the time they started their services, back in 2016. Earlier all these magazines were available in JioMags, and recently around an year back all those contents were shifted to the Jio News.

But, all these are free(unlimited access) only for those who use Jio SIM/Jio Fiber. Others have to login using their Facebook/Google+ and can access them free for 360 days.

[neeraj08]

I would like to mention Evo India here. I recently read their Aug 2020 issue via the Jio News portal. Their content really seems to be written by some enthusiasts. They also put in some really good pictures of landscapes which complement the cars in picture. Also read a few other mags after that but they did not quench my thirst like the former. (may be I was already full)

PS- Use a bigger screen while viewing the digital copy of these magazines.

[ronk]

+1 about EVO. They definitely are the better ones out there today. Still biased, still scared to really show a car its true place. They can’t seem to get enough of Mahindra and Skoda for obvious reasons! Nonetheless, they are better than the others.

The pandemic and our intent to not set a screen stuck adult example to our toddler led me to search for a good car magazine. Evo was the one I managed to continue reading!
I just wish Indian car journos could be as brutal as Jeremy!