Product Description

This magazine is for automobile enthusiasts interested in domestic and imported autos. Each issue contains road tests and features on performance, sports, international coverage of road race, stock and championship car events, technical reports, personalities and products. Road tests are conducted with electronic equipment by engineers and journalists and the results are an important part of the magazine's review section.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #40 in Magazine Subscriptions
• Formats: Magazine Subscription, Print

Customer Reviews

Manufacture Biased Identity Crisis
C&D was once entertaining, witty, objective and a great read. The staff worked well together and they put out a consistently good magazine. Then it went through some rough years where it got kind of tame and boring. Now, it's an ill fitting mix of new and old writers trying to be fresh and hip while being spoon fed by the car manufactures. The magazine lacks consistency, focus and any sort of clear vision as to what they're about.

C&D mostly seems to print what the biggest manufactures want them to. There have been several articles lately, such as on the new Nissan GT-R and Corvette ZR1, that literally mirror articles in other magazines even featuring some of the same quotes from the same car execs. You might as well go to the manufacture's websites and read their press releases.

There has been a lot of inconsistency in C&D's reviews. One car will be rave reviewed, and 4 issues later, will place near the bottom of a multi-car comparison test. The impression is very much whichever manufacture spends the most on ads, dinners, drinks, and other gratuities, gets top billing regardless of the quality and performance of their vehicles.

Some of the writing is entertaining, but that's offset by the same tired editors (Csere, Bedard, et al.) who largely keep writing the same stuff they've been whining about for a decade or three. The end result comes off as heavily biased, anything but objective, and an awkard mix of writing styles.

My suggestion: Save some trees and just skim the C&D website for their rare entertaining exclusive article and get the rest of your automotive news somewhere else.

Probably the best of the mainstream US car mags
I've subscribed to C&D reasonably consistently for about 10 years. I've periodically let my subscription expire for a few months at a time (mainly because I'm too lazy to renew) and have periodically subscribed to (or picked up at the mewstand) other US car magazines like Road & Track, Motortrend, Autoweek, etc., but keep finding myself coming back to C&D. C&D is clearly superior to those I just mentioned, in my opinion.

There are, however, a few magazines out there - like the UK's EVO and CAR, that may be better than C&D from some points of view (better photography, great reviews of a lot of exclusive sports cars I'll never get my hands on), but those publications are very pricey and they don't have as much information on mainstream cars you can buy in the US.

What I like: Good all around magazine. The road tests and comparison tests are generally very good, and reviews are generally chock full of tables of data (acceleration times, pricing, etc.). It's reasonably well written and, generally speaking, when you read a review you get a sense that the editor/reviewer knows what he's talking about (this isn't the case for some of C&D's competitors, unfortunately).

What I don't like so much: The comparison test results aren't always, ahem, all that unbiased (or at least they sometimes don't come across that way). Also, C&D is a car magazine - too many pages are spent on booooring SUVs and Crossovers. One other negative is that C&D just recently (a few months ago) changed their format somewhat - I liked the old format much better and there really was no reason to change, but this is just a minor gripe.

I give C&D 4 stars. Right now I subscribe to C&D and EVO, and I think that's a great combo - EVO for the great photography and articles about high end sports cars, while C&D provides good general information about more mainstream cars you can buy in the states. I doubt I'll ever not have a C&D subscription for any length of time.

Used to be a great mag...
Unfortunately, when Csebra...Casasba....Csabsbreaedads, er, forget it, Editor CC took over the reigns, the quality of the mag dropped with it. Readers letters, specifically those with constructive criticism, are often met with sarcastic, child-like responses. There was many a time when I agreed with a reader's letter, only to read CC shoot it down. Where is this man's humility?

The pictures and layout are still good. Some of the covers promise what looks to be an in-depth article, only to find out inside that it's a one or two page affair. All the US car magazines are swamped with ads, keeping our copy price down, the latter of which is nice. But after 16 years of subscription, I chose not to renew in March. I've been looking at recently resurrected Road and Track, and they have really changed their publication from stodgy old-fart affair to a modern, informative read.

Car and Driver doesn't need a new layout. It needs better management.