Casting the first stone (was: Motor Trend, etc)

["John Hertzman" <johnhertzman@domain.elided>]

Joe Elliott writes "They evidently don't spell check anything over there at
Motor Trend. There's nothing like editors who can't spell and don't care."

I blew a gasket when the latest 'Alfa Owner' arrived, thought briefly of
dropping a comment to the digest, and backed off. Too easy, too often and too
useless. I have long been notoriously hypercritical of what I have perceived
as the magazine's shortcomings, and it has never done a damned bit of good,
other than alienating several of the Club's movers and shakers. But Bernie's
posting of a summary of the contents of the new May (!) issue triggered my
buzzer again.

The cover photograph, identified as an Alfa 158, is of a car which quite
obviously has a naturally aspirated six cylinder engine, identified on the
cowl as 2500 cc, and no similarities to a 158 other than the general shape of
the grill, and being a monoposto with four wheels. The fuller caption does
make it clear enough that the car is a homebuilt South American special
probably based on 6C 2500 parts, but the hypercritical nitpicker which lurks
in the darker recesses of my soul (or wherever, not sure I have one) can't
help feeling that somebody involved in the composition, layout, captioning,
and editing of an Alfa club magazine should have had enough knowledge of and
interest in Alfa Romeos to have known what a 158 was, or to at least to have
run it by someone who did.

To paraphrase Joe, there is nothing like editors who don't know and don't
care.

Long ago the AROC Board of Directors, anticipating Alfa's coming boom years in
the USA as the car-of-choice for tens of thousands of prosperous non-motorhead
yuppies, and frustrated by the bobbles of a series of well-meaning
enthusiast-member amateur editors, decided that the club magazine really had
to be done professionally to live up to the image which the Club desired and
the cars deserved. Well, we have what we have. When you reject amateurs in
favor of professionals you may get what you pay for, but probably not much
more. I do know that they probably mean well and are probably doing their very
best, which is probably the most damning thing I can say about them. I can
forgive Motor Trend for misspelling Alfa Romeo a tad more easily than I can
forgive AROC's professionals for calling an Argentinean homebuilt a 158. And,
as I do every month, I will remain thankful for the Alfa Digest being a
welcoming home for all those amateurs and enthusiasts who are really genuinely
interested in some aspects of the cars.

Imprudently,

John H.

(Rant mode off, but probably not soon enough)
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