Best job in motoring: Seven Autocar editors reveal their highlights

Chas Hallett, editor from 2006

It’s simply the most exciting job I’ve had. Why? As Autocar editor, you’re at the epicentre of the auto industry, knowing everything and everyone. I don’t miss the late nights or the accompanying dodgy takeaways (I’m now several stones lighter). But I miss the camaraderie and the sheer speed at which things happened. The best bits? I helped launch autocar.co.uk and led a radical redesign of the magazine, a format that has largely been retained. We won a major award for it. Quite right too.

Jim Holder, editor from 2012

It’s a Saturday evening. I’m out with my wife and kids. Family time. Then the phone rings.

It’s a contact. He has just heard that Aston Martin is plotting a new hypercar. Goodbye, family time. A call to another contact, this one at Aston. No denial. The original source calls back: it’s happening.

The story is written, subbed and published online. What happens next? It goes global. This is the moment that I finally understand the power of Autocar. The story of the Valkyrie has begun.

Matt Burt, editor from 2015

I went from Motoring News to Autocar, a well-worn path. MN provided superb journalistic training; moving to Autocar was akin to joining a rock supergroup. The best of the best in every area: news desk belting out world-beating scoops, road testers delivering respected new car verdicts with metronomic precision, columnists and writers adding creative licks, sub-editors and art teams honing the look and feel. Each issue was a source of pride: ‘We made this’. Now, seeing it as an outsider, I’m even more in awe of what this team achieves.

Mark Tisshaw, editor from 2017

Two to five years is how long you’ll last, they said. You’ll know because you’ll run out of ideas. Of all the advice that I received when I took Autocar’s editorship in January 2017, this friendly word of warning, albeit delivered tongue in cheek, is the one that stuck with me.

While initially striking the fear of god into me – what would I do for a job when the mag was done with me? – I soon found the opposite to be true: Autocar is something so many people cherish that you soon learn there are far more ideas than you can feasibly use – from readers, contributors, staff colleagues, industry contacts and even people in the pub. The document that I use to keep track of ideas currently runs to 394 entries, and every one is viable.

One of an editor’s key tasks is to listen, to filter good ideas and to keep them safe, then to curate them into a magazine that’s relevant to car enthusiasts of the day. And after five years, I suspect I’m going to find I’ve only just started.

My job differs from the roles of my predecessors because of the huge and continuing growth in our digital output. It’s not just a mag now but also a website with more than three million users per month, plus a video channel, social media presence, newsletters, live events and more. Autocar has never been seen by more eyeballs than it is today.

Yet it’s the magazine pages that set the tone and remain the centre of our universe. Only because of that original 125-year-old publishing icon have we been able to expand into the digital arena and let Autocar’s uniquely authoritative and voice be heard across the world of modern media.