Lawson has called to see the editor of The Cyclist, a solemn-looking former schoolteacher named Henry Sturmey, who founded the magazine – originally known as The Bicyclists’ Independent Handbook – in 1879 at the age of 22 and later sold the title to the enterprising Iliffe company, which prints the lithographic transfers for the cycle frames of Coventry.
Young William Iliffe, anxious to launch a new magazine to catch the profitable weekend market, has so far been unable to fix on a suitable subject. The sight of the motor car sets him thinking: “Mr Sturmey,” he asks his partner as soon as Lawson has departed, “do you believe those things will ever come to anything and be used on the roads?” “I do, Mr Iliffe.” “Have you enough material for a journal about them?” “I have, Mr Iliffe.” “Then we will bring out a paper about them… tomorrow!”
But what should the name of the new publication be? Sturmey runs through the possibilities, for cars are so new no one is quite sure what to call them: “Horseless carriage, automobile carriage, automatic carriage… autocar!” Just in case there’s any doubt, Sturmey subtitles the new magazine: “A journal published in the interests of the mechanically propelled road carriage”. Deadlines have rarely been shorter in the long history of the world’s oldest motor magazine, yet on Saturday 2 November 1895, the first issue of The Autocar, containing a mere 12 pages of editorial, is on the news-stands.
For its first year, Autocar really was a magazine for a persecuted minority, for it wasn’t until 14 November 1896 that the government changed the law to allow motorists “the freedom of the road”. It was, admittedly, a qualified freedom, for there was still a nationwide speed limit, strictly policed, of 12mph, but the infamous ‘red flag man’ was gone.
To celebrate this ‘emancipation day’, Lawson’s Motor-Car Club organised a tour from London to Brighton – still celebrated by the annual London to Brighton Run for pre-1905 cars organised by the Royal Automobile Club – and The Autocar brought out a special ‘red-letter day’ issue, printed in red ink. The pent-up demand for cars was shown by the thousands of copies of the issue that were sold.
Reports vary, but it seems that around 33 cars started for Brighton and 22 got there in time for the celebration dinner. But many years later, Autocar could reveal that several had managed to cover the 50 miles between London and Brighton only because they had been taken down by train!
A driving force
Right from the start, Autocar reported on the international scene: that inaugural issue carried an article on America’s first practical car, the Duryea. The car was to transform America and become an indispensable feature of everyday life – yet at that point, the US was a long way behind Europe in terms of development.
In 1895, nobody could have guessed that the Michigan city of Detroit would one day be nicknamed Motown, for not a single car had yet been seen there. It would be some six months before Henry Ford’s experimental tricycle made its first run through the sleeping city on a quiet June night (maybe a sensible precaution, for he had forgotten to fit his little car with brakes!) as the herald of a new and colossal industry.