'68 COBRA GT's by Steve Kelly - Motor Trend

[SFM66H]

Can someone ID which 1968 issue of MOTOR TREND this article by Steve Kelly was in:



Thanks!
Kieth

[Bill]

I know Steve Kelly did a Shelby vs Corvette using the same picture in the March 1968 Motor Trend under the "Sports Car Tournament: Cobra vs Corvette" headline. Pages 52-57.


Bill 

[SFM66H]

Thanks Bill, I have that March 1968 article too. It's not the same picture per se, but it is the same car (00139).

I feel that the COBRA GT's article wasn't in that issue too, otherwise the same info would have been at the bottom of those pages as well.

I'll never understand why car magazines omitted the issue info so prevalently in the 1960's...

[Rodster-500]

Can someone ID which 1968 issue of MOTOR TREND this article by Steve Kelly was in:



Thanks!
Kieth

Hello my friend,  November 1967.   

[Side-Oilers]

SFM66H wrote:  "I'll never understand why car magazines omitted the issue info so prevalently in the 1960's..."


Please allow me to elaborate:  Having some experience with car magazines like Motor Trend , a lack of issue date and page number on some pages often had to do with last minute ads that took the place of an already-numbered editorial page.

The more ads, the more changes. It's a domino effect. 

When that happened (of course the publisher loved it! More $$!)  the editor would have to quickly reconfigure the remaining pages to fit, cutting out one or two or more pages, depending on the numbers of late ads.  Eliminating the page number and date was the simplest way to move things around...and perhaps having to move them a second time. 

Sometimes, the ad guys would sell enough late ads that the editor would have to come up with 4 or 8 additional finished pages of articles, to plug in at the 11th hour and 59th minute. We always were working on a few extra stories, just in case. If those didn't need to be late-added, they went into the next month's issue.

Often, this reconfiguring happened during "blue-line" which was like a blue print of the magazine (some printers used brown ink, therein called a "brown line.")  Those were one-color press proofs (smelled strangely like formaldehyde) that were made on press check mockup heavy heat-transfer paper (like a 1960s Xerox copy) but before sending through the full printing process. All changes made at that point were completely done at the printer, out of the editor's hands and control. There wasn't time to do otherwise. Between blue-lines arriving at the offices, and the time when you had to call the printer with any fixes or additions, was less than a work day.

Thus, the blue- (or brown) line was literally the last chance to change or correct anything, and also gave the editorial and advertising staffs their first and only chance to see a full mock-up with photos, before the presses rolled. So, any changes had to be made with the editor or art director on the phone telling the printer what to cut and what to add.  Before fax machines were common, and in the days of Linotype machines and actual "cut & paste" with an Xacto knife and hot wax. 

Yes, errors were occasionally added in.  There's an old Petersen urban legend that during a blue-line check of Hot Rod or Car Craft, someone outside of the editorial department changed "barrel" to "bucket" in a tech story on a Holley carb...because they thought the word barrel had been used too many times. How pissed would that editor have been when he saw that for the first time in the "tear copies" of the finished magazine?  And how many reader letters would he have received that month calling the editorial staff a bunch of idiots? 

BTW: "tear copies" (as in "tear them off the press") are non-trimmed, non-bound pages of the entire magazine that's sent to the editor and publisher and art director to give them an advance look at the bound magazine to follow in a few days. Publishers used those to send out ahead of time to big advertisers. Editors typically sent them out to car companies they did a big story on.  Or to call and apologize in advance for an error.

Okay, so that's more than anyone asked (no one asked) about the old days of hands-on magazine production.  But it does hopefully explain why some magazine pages aren't numbered or dated.

As the late Paul Harvey would say: "And know you know the rest of the story."

[Rodster-500]

Wow, that's very interesting and informative Side-Oiler. 

Not a single mention of 'digital'. 

[Side-Oilers]

Yep. The simpler(?) analog days. 

One time, at Popular Hot Rodding in the early/mid '80s, we received a brown-line with an entire "web" of 8 or 16 pages (that's how printing was done back then) run upside down.  If it'd been a holiday, or some other reason why no one looked at it, that would've likely made it into print. 

Try not getting fired if that happened.

[SFM66H]

Can someone ID which 1968 issue of MOTOR TREND this article by Steve Kelly was in:



Thanks!
Kieth

Hello my friend,  November 1967.   

THANKS Rod - You Rule!!!

Kieth

[SFM66H]

SFM66H wrote:  "I'll never understand why car magazines omitted the issue info so prevalently in the 1960's..."


Please allow me to elaborate:  Having some experience with car magazines like Motor Trend , a lack of issue date and page number on some pages often had to do with last minute ads that took the place of an already-numbered editorial page.

The more ads, the more changes. It's a domino effect. 

When that happened (of course the publisher loved it! More $$!)  the editor would have to quickly reconfigure the remaining pages to fit, cutting out one or two or more pages, depending on the numbers of late ads.  Eliminating the page number and date was the simplest way to move things around...and perhaps having to move them a second time. 

Sometimes, the ad guys would sell enough late ads that the editor would have to come up with 4 or 8 additional finished pages of articles, to plug in at the 11th hour and 59th minute. We always were working on a few extra stories, just in case. If those didn't need to be late-added, they went into the next month's issue.

Often, this reconfiguring happened during "blue-line" which was like a blue print of the magazine (some printers used brown ink, therein called a "brown line.")  Those were one-color press proofs (smelled strangely like formaldehyde) that were made on press check mockup heavy heat-transfer paper (like a 1960s Xerox copy) but before sending through the full printing process. All changes made at that point were completely done at the printer, out of the editor's hands and control. There wasn't time to do otherwise. Between blue-lines arriving at the offices, and the time when you had to call the printer with any fixes or additions, was less than a work day.

Thus, the blue- (or brown) line was literally the last chance to change or correct anything, and also gave the editorial and advertising staffs their first and only chance to see a full mock-up with photos, before the presses rolled. So, any changes had to be made with the editor or art director on the phone telling the printer what to cut and what to add.  Before fax machines were common, and in the days of Linotype machines and actual "cut & paste" with an Xacto knife and hot wax. 

Yes, errors were occasionally added in.  There's an old Petersen urban legend that during a blue-line check of Hot Rod or Car Craft, someone outside of the editorial department changed "barrel" to "bucket" in a tech story on a Holley carb...because they thought the word barrel had been used too many times. How pissed would that editor have been when he saw that for the first time in the "tear copies" of the finished magazine?  And how many reader letters would he have received that month calling the editorial staff a bunch of idiots? 

BTW: "tear copies" (as in "tear them off the press") are non-trimmed, non-bound pages of the entire magazine that's sent to the editor and publisher and art director to give them an advance look at the bound magazine to follow in a few days. Publishers used those to send out ahead of time to big advertisers. Editors typically sent them out to car companies they did a big story on.  Or to call and apologize in advance for an error.

Okay, so that's more than anyone asked (no one asked) about the old days of hands-on magazine production.  But it does hopefully explain why some magazine pages aren't numbered or dated.

As the late Paul Harvey would say: "And know you know the rest of the story."

Wow, Thanks for sharing "the rest of the story"! There was way more to it than I had ever expected!!