Two of Formula 1’s most respected journals are digitising their comprehensive back catalogues.
Top annual F1 journal Autocourse, and early F1 magazine and authority Motorsport, are publishing electronic versions of their early editions.
Motorsport have begun offering searchable, browsable editions of entire decades of their magazines on DVD. The magazine covered much more than just Formula 1 but the epic original Grand Prix reports by Denis Jenkinson are utterly fascinating.
I have a stack of Motorsports from the fifties and sixties piled up in my parents’ home and am especially delighted they’ve come up with a more practical way of giving access to them. Unfortunately my birthday’s not until November… (I’m also a fan of the new-look Motorsport).
The decades DVDs for the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, each containing 120 issues, are £39.99 per decade. There are also individual year editions available for 1957, 1967, 1976 and 1986 because of particular interest in these years, priced at £14.99 each.
Meanwhile Crash.net, owners of the famous Autocourse, Motocourse and Rallycourse annuals for F1, motorbikes and rallying respectively, have indicated they will be producing electronic copies of their editions soon.
Individual editions of Autocourses from early years are sold for hundreds of pounds and complete collections have been valued at over £4,000.
My own Autocourse collection numbers 14, including my prized 1982 edition, which famously has no number one driver in its annual “top ten drivers” list, because of the death of Gilles Villeneuve.
Rob ijbema
23rd May 2008, 11:17
that is great news,the 1970 edition is very hard to get,i think they had a fire wich resulted in fewer excamples being available.
i love my Autocourse collection (and auto year)
the earliest being 1967!
Kije
23rd May 2008, 11:44
In a move parallel to F1’s flops in value-added sales, it appears that Autocourse appears to care not for U$D. Auotcourse seems to have sent only 12 copies of their Indy 500 book, published sometime last Fall, to these shores. So here it is, on the eve of re-united open wheel racing at Indy, and the only place one can get a copy of the Autocourse Indy 500 history is via the speculators on E-bay and the like. Somebody in Autocourse marketing ought to have their neck placed on the block…
theRoswellite
23rd May 2008, 12:51
Such a nice resource.
Now where do I look to find those old race articles, the ones with photos that still float about so prominently in the haze of my impressionable youth, the ones that appeared miraculously each month in Road & Track and Sports Car Graphic?
It is hard now to imagine a time when a boy might wait weeks, even months, for the results of a “world championship” event. Of course, that was the lot of anyone coming of age in a small town, in a small state, in always provincial America.
Obster
23rd May 2008, 17:30
Roswellite-how true-the prized Road and Track issue with this weekend’s Indy 500, Monaco GP and LeMans did not appear at the magazine store until the end of August-right before school began again! Right around now we were reading about Sebring.
These days I have to avoid the internet for hours or days if I have recorded a GP so as not to get spoiled.
I am interested in seeing some of the older Autocourse annuals from the late 60’s and 70’s.
Yes, Keith, I also have the 82 edition. Is that the first color edition?
Ben
23rd May 2008, 18:58
I love my autocourses and motocourses, nothing beats the thrill of picking one up as a bargain. I have never paid more than £40 for a single copy and I have almost every year from 1976-present, although I now realise I’m going to have to shell out big£££ for some years.
My best ever autocourse moment, and one which makes keith sick whenever I mention it, was when I walked into a charity shop one day and got Autocourse 1980&81 and Motocourse 1980 all for £1 each and all in mint condition.
I think that going digital is great as some years are so ludicrously expensive, at the same time nothing beats coming home and finding the latest edition i got from ebay nestling in my letterbox