How Autocar is made

He explains: “News editor Felix Page will give me a simple brief: the next-generation Audi A6, for example. I’ll look at recent concept cars and the brand’s new design language and then look at the current car for proportions. That’s the simplest way. On the other hand, when there’s something much more futuristic, such as our 8 November scoop on the Toyota Celica revival, I’ll consider that shape again and draw it from scratch. I’ll do an outline and some vague shapes of grilles, filling it in as I go. That takes a lot longer, whereas a new A6 I can do practically blindfolded.”

He adds that the homogeneity of modern cars – particularly those from Germany – can make this task much simpler. “It’s just Russian doll stuff, really,” he jokes. The end result, known as a rendering, is often remarkably close to the production car, with recent wins including the Dacia Duster, Lotus Emeya and Volvo EX30.

This kicks off the next phase of the design work. Art editor Sarah Özgül, junior designer Tara Tuohy and group art editor Stephen Hopkins (‘Hoppo’, to anyone who’s ever met him) begin developing page layouts, making judgement calls on the images provided by Summerell-Youde and the structure of the story.

Özgül notes that everything quickly “evolves” from this point on, by way of a cyclical discussion between herself, Summerell-Youde, the relevant section editor and managing editor Sami Shah.

Pointing to a feature she is currently designing, Özgül explains: “I’ve got the copy on a Word document and I know it’s supposed to be four pages. I didn’t have any pictures earlier, so I asked Ben to find some. Today, I’ve come back to it after a think about the design and reckon it would work better as a two-page spread. So I’ve had a discussion with Sami, who’s then had the change approved by the section editor.

“As I’m laying it out, I’m discussing pictures with Ben while I’m reading the story and getting a feel for how it should look on page.” 

The back and forth between editorial and production is essential to ensuring we’re all working in concert, under the pressure of the ticking clock – and that ticking has hardly ever felt more imposing than it does now.

When you consider the number of pages that go into every issue and the time available to produce them, on average we have a little over half an hour to devote to each page in order to hit our weekly deadlines. That’s under ideal circumstances, but like any operation, things like IT issues, transport disruption or a global pandemic (not even that was enough to knock us off our stride) can throw a wrench in the works – and on top of that there are the boundless efforts required to feed content to the Autocar website (see below).

It’s Shah’s job to bring order to the chaos, dictating the firing order of magazine pages and seeing them over the finish line.

“We’ve done it long enough together to know how much time each task takes and whether we are behind or ahead of schedule,” says Shah. He explains that the magazine pages are sent to the printers digitally in various sections, each with a different deadline on press day at the end of the week, the last of which containing news stories that are inevitably subject to eleventh-hour changes.

“The printers will give us a bit of leeway, but we can’t miss our print slot, so if we’re running more than a few minutes late, the phone will start ringing. That said, we don’t want to miss out on a big story, so a conversation with the editor will take place about the logistics of squeezing it in and a judgement call has to be made.”

In part for the sake of his own sanity, Shah plays a key role in the process of ironing out any errors. Along with chief sub-editor Kris Culmer and special contributors Peter McSean and Tim Dickson, it is his job to ensure each story nails the brief, reads well, is faithful to Autocar’s style guide, is legally sound and is factually accurate – there are rather a few facts and figures in each issue of Autocar – with the entire editorial team chipping in to fill any knowledge gaps. Picture captions and headlines are then added – some straight, some (we hope) witty.

Simultaneously, an external team finesses the images on each page. They ensure details such as road markings don’t clash with headlines or other page furniture, as well as colour-correcting and brightening or darkening images as required.

Thereafter, each story is sent to senior editors to be proofread. Shah says: “Every completed page is read at least three times: by the sub-editor who worked on it, by the editor who proofs it and finally by myself or Kris. Pages receive updates throughout the production cycle, so it’s important that the final version gets a close read, even though one eye will always be on the clock.”

Meanwhile, Özgül separately gives each page her blessing, checking the reprographic work and ensuring everything looks as it should.

At last, the pages are ready to be collated into a section of the magazine and in pdf form sent from our office in Twickenham to the printers, William Gibbons & Sons, in Wolverhampton.

As soon as the first batch lands, typically in the mid-afternoon on Friday, a team loads it onto printing plates. There are four plates on the top side of a double-sided spread, four at the bottom. Two print operators – one for the upper half of the page, the other for the lower section – double-check everything is in the correct colour format and has loaded correctly. If all is well, they press ‘start’ and pages begin flying literally hot off the press: first the glossy covers, then the middle section comprising first drives and the road test.

As pages come off the line, the operators check the colours align with those programmed into the press and for anything else untoward. This loop of printing and checking will be repeated tens of thousands of times for each chunk of the magazine over a weekend.

The material requirements for this are colossal: the paper used for the covers alone weighs about as much as an Ariel Atom. Throw in the five tonnes used for the middle sections and the total print run for each issue of Autocar becomes heavier than two Land Rover Defenders. Combine the more than a million copies produced annually and you get a greater mass than three Concordes: more than 280 tonnes.

Everything will be printed by Monday morning. Thereafter, a half-complete copy is taken to a senior manager who will double-check that all the folios (broad ‘spreads’ of paper) are printed correctly, in the right order.

Once they give the go-ahead, the magazine is painstakingly stitched together, the covers are attached and the final product is trimmed to size. Several copies – a few for every thousand prints – are pulled from the print run for quality control.

By 3pm each Monday, the finished print product you will see on shop shelves – or indeed coming through your letterbox – is ready.

The copies are thereafter split into two batches: one for retail sale and the other for subscribers. The former bucket is loaded onto pallets and readied for a 4am collection, destined for a Coventry distribution hub. Subscriber copies, on the other hand, are taken to Birmingham to be posted on the Monday afternoon. From that point on, the timely arrival of your latest issue is in the hands of Royal Mail…

It’s an extensive – and relentless – process. So the next time you peruse an issue of Autocar, spare a thought for the many people who worked tirelessly to (hopefully) bring a moment of joy to your week.

How the Autocar website comes together

The workflow of the website is somewhat different from that of the mag. The transition from idea to article can all come from one person and rather quickly, but in most cases it passes through a network of people.