Phil’s car journey started with his dad, forever tinkering with mum’s Morris Minor Traveller in the garage and looking unusually cool in his Reliant Scimitar. My interest in Ford, Peugeot and BMW stems from his car tastes, and I started writing about cars in 1998 for a company car magazine. This led to a couple of years as news editor on Autocar, before my love for glossy, intelligent magazines lured me to CAR in 2003 – and I’ve been here ever since.
CAR has been an incredible playground, giving me the access to cover an industry I find fascinating and thrilling. As editor of CAR for 10 years and 124 issues, I inherited a mag with a pioneering history of great story-telling, leading-edge photography and award-winning design, and tried to shape it for the future by embracing new car trends and technologies and digital publishing channels.
My favourite two drive stories were bending the rules to take a Porsche 997 to the Great Wall of China, and blasting from Monte Carlo to Maranello in a Ferrari 430 Scuderia, Maserati GranTurismo and Alfa 8C, commemorating those three brands 1-2-3 in the 1950 Monaco GP. A mind-blowing opportunity, where I could wallow in my love of exotic Italian cars for five days. And drag it out for almost two decades so far!
Since 2008 I’ve been on the panel of European journalists who crown the continent’s Car of the Year, and it’s been gratifying to see stepchange EVs such as the Nissan Leaf, Jaguar iPace and Kia EV6 take the award. Now, as group editor of CAR, I’m keen to push the brand in new directions and build on the editorial team’s great work in growing the magazine’s circulation over the past couple of years. While still getting to drive, write and tweet about the world’s greatest cars.
Read on to see all the latest articles and reviews by Phil McNamara in the list below.