Over a hundred years ago, a young Englishman created a magazine related to cars, which became an important part of the industry’s evolution. Can you imagine a world without cars, where the road traffic i.e. the pedal cycle and the horse-drawn cart moves very slowly? It’s still not a silent world, just the noises are different. The world has changed steadily over the last century, as we saw the creation of the railway.
If you go back to the UK in 1984, you would see that even though it was the hub of the Industrial Revolution, it was at least 8 years behind Germany and France in adopting the motor car. There’s wasn’t a single local manufacturer, and in the entire country, there were only six cars.
Whenever they went onto the road, the drivers were afraid of falling prey to the law, as the authorities were considering them the same as a five-ton traction engine. So, according to the law, it was required for every car to have a driver, an engineer, and a man who would walk in front and warn about the vehicle. So he approached Henry Sturmey and William Iliffe, publishers of the magazine, and they agreed on creating a new magazine. You can say that the magazine was only for a persecuted minority in its first year, the government, for the first time gave the motorists the freedom of the road. You can call it en earned freedom, as there was still a speed limit of 11mph. A tour from London to Brighton was arranged by the Lawson’s Motor-Car Club, to celebrate the great day.
The magazine had been a driving force from the very beginning. The car was supposed to change America, and become a part of everyday life, even though the US was way behind Europe in terms of development.