9:32 am, October 21, 2024
When I launched Car Dealer Magazine back in February 2008 – some 16 years ago – I never imagined we’d publish 200 issues.
I remember putting that first issue together on my own. I wrote the stories, laid out the pages and even went and pitched the business idea to some advertisers.
One of the very first meetings was with Don Brough, chief executive of First Response Finance. He welcomed me into his offices in Nottingham and listened to my nervous pitch.
For some reason, he must have seen something in the idea because he agreed to advertise and his multi-award winning finance company has been advertising in every single issue of the magazine ever since.
I think about that meeting a lot, and the other firms I pitched too when I took the Car Dealer idea on the road back then. The firms that got in early and supported the magazine will never be forgotten.
I paid for that first issue’s print and postage bill with a personal loan. It was risky as I only had enough for one issue and needed to ensure I covered its costs and had some left over to do it again the next month.
I remember several people said I was mad.
With some help from a factoring agency (long gone) I managed the income enough to keep it going and it grew from there.
I absolutely loved printing a magazine and sending it out to car dealers across the country. I cut my teeth on newspapers and car mags and just loved the art of print.
There is something so special about putting a magazine together, working out the order, choosing the pictures and producing a cover – it’s not quite the same with a website, there’s still a buzz, but it’s different.
The highs of getting those first copies back from the printer, the smell of the paper and the first flick through the order is a special thing.
Then Covid came along and we stopped printing Car Dealer for good. When that first lockdown arrived it was a hard decision to make, but we couldn’t rightly send a magazine with our advertisers’ artwork in it to showrooms that were closed.
It forced a rethink and we ploughed everything we had into our website. Before Covid it would get 500,000 visitors a YEAR – then in 2023 we topped 12m users and were attracting 500,000 visitors every two weeks.
These days the team works for the website first, keeping it updated daily with news and features that millions of people read.
But, as our name suggests, Car Dealer Magazine is still a very important part of what we do and our digital issues have become very popular too.
Our team produces a ‘highlights package’ every month of the best content from the website and curates it in much the same way as we would a print magazine. It’s published in a digital format and posted on the bottom of every story on the website.
Thousands of you read it every month and today we have published a very special 200th issue. I am incredibly proud that we’ve made it this far and seeing our Road Test of the Year story adorn the cover is a fitting feature for a special issue.
You can find the issue below and I do hope you enjoy the RTOTY feature as much as we did putting it together.
We’ve also produced a Road Test of the Year video to go with it. Our road testers take you behind the wheel of each of the cars and discuss what makes them so special.
We’ve got an amazing line-up this year – from electric performance hatchbacks to supercars – and it makes for one hell of a test.
We’ve also recorded a special podcast about RTOTY too, so you can hear our testers’ views and opinions on each of the special cars.
I still can’t quite believe that today we’ve pushed the button on our 200th issue.
Car Dealer might be a very different beast to what it was when I sent that first issue to the printers back in 2008, but the passion for this industry that brought it into this world still burns very bright.
Thank you to my team, past and present, who have helped make those 200 issues happen and for the incredible support of the industry. Without the car dealers and manufacturers giving us their stories, and the wonderful suppliers to the industry supporting what we do, we couldn’t have got here.
Right, as you were. I’ve got an accounts story that needs writing up… while I do that, enjoy the issue.
