What has always made C/D unique among car magazines has been its continual editorial policy of finding good writers and letting them write. The personalities of C/D's staffers always come through in their writing. This has had the effect of making C/D one of the better-written magazines on any subject, let alone cars. Padgett allows the reader to peek behind the curtain a bit at some of the larger-than-life personalities who have shaped the magazine, editors like David E. Davis Jr. (who would go on to found Automobile magazine), Brock Yates, Patrick Bedard, Don Sherman, and many others. For long-time fans of the magazine like myself, this is a real treat and I found myself greedily wanting more of it. But I suppose Padgett had an obligation not to drag down the book with too much "inside baseball" talk.
The book looks fantastic. The quality of photography and typography is simply stunning. Magazines aren't printed in such a way as to last forever; this book allows longtime C/D readers to really see some of the magazine's stunning photographs for the first time.
One quibble I have is that much--make that much--of the book's content is lifted more or less verbatim from the 50th anniversary issue of the magazine. Virtually all of Patrick Bedard's comments come from the several pieces he wrote for that issue, for example. There's really nothing wrong with using the magazine's own version of its history as a source, but for most C/D fans it represents a redundancy. And if this $50 (suggested list) book isn't for C/D fans, who is it for?
Nevertheless, radical C/D completists such as myself (I have every issue since December 1969) know they have to have this book. It probably isn't as good as it could have been. But it's still very, very good. Just like the magazine.
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