► The very first leader in CAR magazine
► Full editorial from Small Car and Mini Owner
► Archive excerpt from CAR+
Here is a new kind of motoring magazine. It is produced for the conditions of today, aimed at the small car owner because most drivers are small car owners.
Crowded roads and high taxation starting the scaling down, and manufacturers finished it by making small cars so good that we don’t need big ones any more.
We estimate that at least half the seven million cars on British roads today are small cars, and the proportion is going up.
If you ask ‘What is a small car?’ you risk as many answers as the man who asked ‘What is a sports car?’ One definition fixes a sports car as something you can’t walk through with a top hat on: it’s as wide-open as that!
You could get an equally silly definition of a small car. There are little cars with big engines and big cars with little engines. So we will stick our necks out and say a small car is one with an engine of less than 1600cc.
We aim to amuse, entertain, instruct and to look after the interests of the overtaxed and mucked-about motoring millions. We are on your side. We hope you will stay – as you have obviously started – on ours.