Buy the Road Rat magazine via their website at theroadrat.com. All images © The Road Rat
When I was little, my dad worked as a sales rep for the automobile parts manufacturers, Fleetguard and Cummins, which required him to visit the industry trade shows that showcased the new cars released each year. The bonus for me was that he would always return with piles of brochures packed with glamorous photography (think Saab 93 set against impossibly picturesque golden hour landscapes), aspirational illustrations, fold-out pages, and eye-catching design techniques. My brothers and I would pore over these mini-magazines, each one offering dream fuel for our impressionable, young minds. This was the 1980s in peak hard-sell mode after all, and I credit those brochures with kick-starting my love for all things design and print.
Fast forward to today and I was instantly drawn to the bright orange copy of The Road Rat sat waiting for me on the shelf of WH Smiths at Heathrow airport. The face of James Hunt challenging me to buy after decades of disinterest in cars, thanks mostly to an industry-wide trend of boring, homogeneous design, apparently led by the maxim of ‘be bigger’ instead of ‘be beautiful’.
I did buy it, and every issue since (acquiring several back issues too) and have loved this return to a pure appreciation of cars— the engineering and craft in their creation, and the energy and ephemera that surrounds it. From Formula 1 to wood-panelled beach tourers, The Road Rat celebrates all forms of motoring, even running a recent feature on the Mark 1 Capri— a car I owned as ‘a classic’ and eventually nicknamed ‘the cursed car’ after several sorry episodes including driving it into the back of a tradesman’s van on a Bristol roundabout, discovering a concrete block (and matching large dent) on its bonnet one morning, and a run-in with my father-in-law’s ride-on lawnmower.
It’s an immaculately designed magazine, a true reminder of the beauty of print, and the thoughtful, laid-back way of consuming good journalism in a time obsessed with surface level virality.
It’s also no doubt fed into my latest font, Alpha Strada, out now!
