Autocar digitization

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Work begins to digitise 126 years of Autocar magazine

All 700,000 pages of the world's oldest motoring magazine will be accessible and searchable via online hub

Every issue of Autocar printed since the magazine was founded in 1895 is to be digitised over the next six months and will be made accessible via a dedicated online archive later this year.

The scanning process, which will be carried out by Coventry-based Archive Digital Limited, will be non-destructive so as to preserve the physical copies of each issue. Autocar's own archive is believed to be one of just six complete collections of the magazine in existence.

Each digital file will be stored as a digitally searchable PDF to allow users to quickly and easily find content of interest from 126 years of Autocar back issues. Full details will be released nearer to publication, but parties can register their interest now at [email protected].

Uniquely, Autocar - which began as The Autocar and was proudly labelled as a “journal published in the interests of the mechanically propelled road carriage” - has been published weekly since being founded in November 1895, continuing to print even at times of national crisis, including the two world wars.

It's believed that the only interruptions were during the General Strike in 1926, the Fuel Crisis in 1973 and print-related issues in 1975. That means around 6500 issues and 700,000 pages will be digitised as part of the project - enough paper to cover the 130 miles from Autocar's London offices to Archive Digital's Coventry facility.

www.autocar.co.uk

Work begins to digitise 126 years of Autocar magazine | Autocar

All 700,000 pages of the world's oldest motoring magazine will be accessible and searchable via online hub
www.autocar.co.uk www.autocar.co.uk

Autocar 1.jpgAutocar 2.jpgAutocar 3.jpg
 
Autocar Archive: 125 years of motoring history now available online

More than 6000 issues including 1.1 million pages are now offered through The Motoring Archive

The entire Autocar magazine archive has been digitised and is now available online, making the world’s most comprehensive history of the automobile accessible to all.

Autocar was first published on 2 November 1895 and has been published virtually continually since then. The entire archive – covering 125 years and containing more than 6000 issues and 1.1 million pages – has been digitised by Archive Digital Limited, and will be available through www.themotoringarchive.com.

The Autocar Archive is now the most comprehensive history of the car available online. When the first issue of the magazine was published, there were just six cars on the UK’s roads, and Autocar has since charted every major development and driven every significant car.

The Autocar Archive will initially cover the first 125 years of the magazine’s history up to 2020, with this year’s issues then archived and made available in 2022.

The digitisation process undertaken by Archive Digital Limited involved scanning every page by hand, which ensured the preservation of the centuries-old early issues of the magazine. It took more than six months to complete, and is believed to be the largest magazine digitalisation process undertaken in the UK in the past 20 years.

www.autocar.co.uk

Archive special: How the Ford Fiesta was born | Autocar

Read as we follow the story of Ford's icon, from an expensive inception to Autocar's universal praise
www.autocar.co.uk www.autocar.co.uk

The Motoring Archive

www.themotoringarchive.com www.themotoringarchive.com

Mag 1.jpegMag 2.jpegMag 3.jpegMag 4.jpeg
 
From print to pixels: Digitising the Autocar Archive

Autocar’s entire collection of back issues has been painstakingly digitised into a searchable library that documents the whole history of the motor car. Here's how it was done

The moment it moved on from a ‘wouldn’t it be great if...’ conversation to something more concrete, I might have let out a small yelp of joy. Taking a trip to the Autocar archive, usually tucked discreetly down some stairs in whichever office Haymarket Media Group has occupied at the time, has been one of the pleasures of working here.

A pleasure denied for too long to too many people. Some libraries and museums have back issues of Autocar, but standing among a full run of issues, which report almost the entire history of the car and which are neatly bound and searchable via handwritten or typed index cards, is a great way to lose an afternoon and miss a deadline. Or two.

Then came the email from Jim Holder, former Autocar editor and now editorial director: ‘Next time you’re down there, can you count how many bound volumes there are and how many pages you think might be in each one?’

www.autocar.co.uk

Archive special: How the Ford Fiesta was born | Autocar

Read as we follow the story of Ford's icon, from an expensive inception to Autocar's universal praise
www.autocar.co.uk www.autocar.co.uk

Autocar 1.jpegAutocar 2.jpegAutocar 3.jpegAutocar 4.jpeg
 
For the record: How Autocar made its mark

Since its launch, Autocar has documented key world events through the prism of the automotive industry. We revisit 126 years of publication

I really wish I weren’t living through a major historical event right now.’ It was meant as dark humour, but this post that appeared on my Twitter timeline in the murky depths of March 2020 made me realise that the Covid-19 pandemic would genuinely be a period forever rememberedand analysed. More significantly, it meant that the daily reporting of all of us at Autocar would be looked upon as part of a historical record.

In truth, although pandemics, world wars, oil crises, key car launches, engineering innovations, company failings, worker strikes and legislative upheaval (no bigger example of which can be found than that occurring as you read these words) expectedly come to be seen as major markers, everything on which we report and every letter from a reader that we publish is an indelible and valuable source offact and contemporary perspective.

Imagine you’re Henry Sturmey in 1897, two years after founding The Autocar, riding atop your sparkling new Daimler, exposed to the elements and having but 4bhp under your right foot and a tiller with which to steer. It’s quite fantastic, indescribably more refined, more powerful, comfier,faster and more obedient than the horse that you and every one of your ancestors had relied uponfor primary transport.

“We are very pleased with it,” you write in the magazine’s first ever long-term test report. “All who have yet ridden in it express themselves highly pleased with its comfort. No one need hesitate about purchasing a car under the belief that they are anything but practical articles.”

www.autocar.co.uk

For the record: How Autocar made its mark | Autocar

Since its launch, Autocar has documented key world events through the prism of the automotive industry. We revisit 126 years of publication
www.autocar.co.uk www.autocar.co.uk

Autocar 1.jpegAutocar 2.jpegAutocar 3.jpegAutocar 4.jpegAutocar 5.jpegAutocar 6.jpegAutocar 7.jpegAutocar 8.jpegAutocar 9.jpegAutocar 10.jpeg
 
Why scan all 126 years'? Surely there should be soft copies of the last few decades on a drive somewhere?
 
Thanks to the ace new @autocar archive, you can now see in one screenshot exactly what got @MrJamesMay
fired nearly 30 years ago. Just read the drop capitals in order. A few of us were involved, but he alone took the rap. Not that his career exactly suffered as a result…

FD7pLBZWQAIg_fo


Link to original Tweet here.
 
Back in my day: Autocar issues from our writers' birthdays

With more than 125 years of history available through the Autocar archive, where does one start? Simple: where you started

Now that the entire published history of Autocar has been digitised and made available online, there's never been a better time to look back on some standout years from the magazine's storied past. But where to start?

Easy. We dug out the issues from the weeks we were born and delved into a handy motoring time capsule:

www.autocar.co.uk

Back in my day: Autocar issues from our writers' birthdays | Autocar

With more than 125 years of history available through the Autocar archive, where does one start? Simple: where you started
www.autocar.co.uk www.autocar.co.uk

311504DE-0330-4113-944A-1063CB280120.jpeg5CF368F9-401D-4822-B92B-B5CBDD53D4F1.jpegBDF5EA7F-0A54-4D9F-8FEE-3179F1726578.jpegAD491DEA-C958-4497-813F-3F3557518979.jpegB1F1A23C-649E-48E0-AE52-CDAFB0794629.jpegC783CFD4-4457-4A6D-AC5D-26DDE9921519.jpeg6E30D173-42DF-4B9E-A6E0-DBC37D0DAD30.jpegCBE7862C-822A-4C25-8EC5-A38CEBC1F3BA.jpeg577F0279-0BE3-4DEE-82BB-08A5038D2E0C.jpeg3F52A5B6-1672-41FE-947E-DD4C1C4873E1.jpeg
 
Act fast: Enjoy free access to the Autocar Archive

Follow 129 years of motoring history, from the first public demonstration of cars in Britain to the present day

Autocar is providing free access to its digital archive, spanning 129 years of motoring history.

Sign up here and you can browse through more than 6200 magazine issues, spanning from 1895 to the present day.

We've covered everything from the first demonstration of cars in Britain (2 November 1895) to the birth of the BMC Mini (28 August 1959), the arrival of the Ford Fiesta (17 July 1976), the debut of the Ferrari F40 (14 October 1987) and much more besides.

You can also browse more than 100 years of our empirical road tests, starting with the Rover 8hp (27 March 1920) and touching on milestones such as the Jaguar E-Type (24 March 1961) and McLaren F1 (11 May 1994).

Move quickly, though, because the free access expires at 5pm BST on 24 September.

www.autocar.co.uk

Act fast: Enjoy free access to the Autocar Archive | Autocar

Follow 129 years of motoring history, from the first public demonstration of cars in Britain to the present day
www.autocar.co.uk www.autocar.co.uk
 
You Can Read All 129 Years Of Autocar Magazine For Free

There are over 6,200 issues of car takes to look back on and judge with the smug benefit of hindsight

Autocar is one of the oldest automotive publications on the planet, first putting ink to paper in 1895. The British weekly car magazine announced on Thursday that its digital archive will be open to the masses free of charge for the next five days. I highly recommend that every enthusiast take the opportunity to immerse themselves in nearly 130 years of vehicular history.

The Autocar digital archive was made publicly accessible in 2023, but only for subscribers. Such an extensive collection of editorial content allows a window back to past opinions. For example, the magazine covers the Ford Fiesta’s British debut in July 1976, just after America’s bicentennial. A column separate from the launch assessed the risky change of course Ford was making:

“Now there is evidence that they moved too soon, and that while the American public may well have told the researchers that they wanted small economical cars at the height of the publicity about the lack of petrol and the patriotic need to conserve, what they really wanted was still the large, comfortable, heavy, chromed status symbols.”

The sentiment could be read as a distant prediction of SUVs and pickup trucks being dominant in the United States. However, it was likely a reference to the previous dominance of luxury sedans… and pickup trucks. The desire for economic cars was believed to be just a fad caused by the 1973 oil crisis. The column cites the prospects that drilling oil beneath the North Sea would bring fuel prices tumbling down, making the Fiesta and every other compact two-door marketplace pariahs.

jalopnik.com

You Can Read All 129 Years Of Autocar Magazine For Free

There are over 6,200 issues of car takes to look back on and judge with the smug benefit of hindsight
jalopnik.com jalopnik.com
 
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