At one point they had a price ceiling on the ten best list. Their explicit rationale was that $40,000 or whatever it was (this was a while ago) *ought* to get you a car that leaves little to be desired, and the purpose of the review was to sort out the pros and cons of the sort of cars most of us working stiffs might actually buy.
I went from subscriber to irregular dentist-office-and-barbershop flipper-througher circa an ownership change that they underwent sometime in the early 90s. That was about the time the identity merchandise started appearing in the back; and Jean Lindamood went to, where was it, Automobile magazine; and the interjectory [Ed.] seemed to blunt his edge.
It still has some things that are humorously written (after all these years the whole genre still owes a great debt to Tom McCahill, late of Mechanix Illustrated) and sometimes informative. The days when its arrival in the mailbox was by definition a fine day are long gone, which admittedly might have as much to do with me as with the magazine...
--Joe