Dead: Sport Compact Car, 115 employees Laid Off

First Sportscar International goes, then AutoWeek turns into Auto-Every-Other-Week, and now, according to reports, the publishers of Sports Compact Car have pulled the plug and are laying off 150 employees.

Seems like the bad times are really here for the publishing industry.

Sources say that February will be the last issue for Sport Compact Car, which is published by the same outfit (Interlink) that also published Turbo Magazine, which has also gone MIA. Sport Compact Car was, for many, the bible for the import car scene. They focused on small displacement, front wheel drive cars and had no problem diving head first into such intimidating areas as ECU and suspension tuning. Over the last half decade, their page count and circulation numbers had steadily declined.

I would bet that this trend continues. Bigger name plates, like Road & Track and Car & driver will probably survive, all things being equal, since they are under the umbrella of larger publishing companies, but smaller outfits that are, in effect, independently produced, like Sportscar International and Sport Compact Car, just couldn’t hang on.

Bad days for the car publishing business indeed.

Source: AutoBlog

Ouch. This was a pretty good magazine. I don’t expect Motor Trend, C&D or R&T to go anywhere though. Although since C&D and R&T are owned by the same folks (HFMUS,) do you think they’ll be dropping one?

” … do you think they’ll be dropping one?”

Good question, and one I hadn’t thought of.

I did know that Hatchet/Filipentti owned both, but I’m not sure what might happen. Sure, dropping one, or perhaps combining them?

Dunno … still a good question though.