Best Car Magazines to Read in 2025

The automotive print landscape has thinned out considerably over the last decade, but the magazines that survived—and the new digital-native titles that have emerged—are sharper than ever. If you’re looking for the best car magazines to read in 2025, the honest answer is that the right choice depends entirely on what you do with your car. A track-day enthusiast, a DIY mechanic, and a new-car shopper have almost zero overlap in reading material. Here’s how to sort through what’s actually worth your money this year.

The Counter-Intuitive Truth: Print Is Now a Specialty Tool

Here’s the angle most roundups skip: the best car magazine in 2025 isn’t the one with the most subscribers or the slickest photography. It’s the one that gives you information you cannot get faster or better from a YouTube video or a forum thread. Print has a latency problem—anything published in a monthly issue was written two to three months prior. That makes general news coverage worthless. What print still does better than digital is long-form technical analysis, comparative testing with controlled variables, and editorial judgment that isn’t chasing an algorithm.

If a magazine reads like a collection of press releases, put it down. The titles worth your shelf space in 2025 are the ones doing original testing, publishing dyno sheets, and explaining why a part fails—not just that it does.

What this means for your next decision: Before you subscribe to anything, ask whether the content would still be useful if it arrived six weeks late. If the answer is no—because it’s news, rumors, or first-drive impressions of cars you haven’t bought yet—you’re paying for yesterday’s headlines. If the answer is yes—because it’s a suspension geometry explainer or a 40,000-mile ownership report—that magazine earns its shelf space. This single filter will eliminate half the titles on the market.

What Each Major Title Actually Does Well

Car and Driver: The Benchmark for Objective Testing

Car and Driver remains the gold standard for instrumented testing. Their Lightning Lap series at Virginia International Raceway and their annual 10Best awards are still the most cited benchmarks in the industry. What separates them from the pack is their insistence on publishing raw data—0-60 times, skidpad numbers, braking distances—in a consistent, repeatable format. If you’re comparing two sports sedans and want to know which one posts the faster figure-eight time, this is your source.

The trade-off: their editorial voice leans heavily toward the enthusiast-buyer perspective. You won’t find deep repair guides or long-term ownership cost breakdowns here. They tell you what a car does, not what it costs to keep on the road after 60,000 miles. If your priority is understanding whether a used BMW 3 Series will drain your savings account in maintenance, this title will leave you guessing.

How to verify their data is useful for your specific comparison: When you’re reading a Car and Driver test, check the footer of the spec table for the test date and ambient conditions. Their numbers come from a specific day at a specific track—usually their Michigan testing grounds. If you’re comparing their figure-eight time for a Civic Type R from a March issue against a Golf R from an October issue, the temperature difference alone (often 20-30°F) can shift lap times by half a second. Use their data to compare cars tested in the same session or season, not across six months of weather variation.

MotorTrend: The Broadest Coverage, With a Streaming Catch

MotorTrend has pivoted hard into video, and their magazine now functions partly as a companion to their streaming service. That’s not necessarily a bad thing—their “Car of the Year” testing regimen is still the most rigorous in the business, involving real-world driving loops, instrumented testing, and judging across six criteria that include efficiency, value, and engineering excellence.

What’s less useful: their road tests have gotten shorter over the years, clearly designed to push you toward the video content for the full picture. If you prefer reading to watching, you’ll occasionally feel like you’re getting the abridged version. Still, for a single subscription that covers new cars, trucks, SUVs, and EV news, MotorTrend is the most complete package.

Where this can go wrong: The streaming tie-in means some of the most detailed technical content—full dyno runs, extended track sessions, multi-day comparisons—lives exclusively in video. If you’re a reader who wants to skim a spec sheet at your desk, you’ll find yourself watching a 20-minute video to get the one number you needed. Before subscribing, check whether the digital archive includes the full written test data or just summaries. Some of their best content is effectively video-only, which defeats the purpose of a print subscription if you don’t watch.

Road & Track: For the Driving Enthusiast Who Reads

Road & Track has evolved into the literary arm of enthusiast journalism. Their features go deep on driving dynamics, chassis engineering, and the history of specific platforms. In 2025, they’re one of the few titles still publishing technical explainers that actually explain—like detailed breakdowns of how active aerodynamics work or why certain suspension geometries create specific handling traits.

This is not the magazine for repair guidance or purchase advice. It’s for understanding the feel of a car, which is a legitimate but narrower mission. If you track your car or simply appreciate well-written analysis of why a Porsche 911 GT3 RS behaves the way it does, this is your title.

The limitation to know before you buy: Road & Track’s technical pieces assume a baseline of engineering literacy. If you’re new to cars, their suspension explainers will lose you by the second paragraph. But if you’ve already done a few track days or suspension upgrades, the depth is unmatched. The mismatch risk here is subscribing because you like cars generally, then discovering the content assumes you already know the difference between a MacPherson strut and a double-wishbone setup. That’s not a flaw in the magazine—it’s a fit issue with your current knowledge level.

Hagerty: The Ownership-Centric Dark Horse

Hagerty’s magazine, sent to members of their collector car insurance program, is the most underrated automotive publication in America. Their editorial focus is on the collector and enthusiast market, but they’ve expanded into genuinely useful ownership content: market value trends, rust repair guides, storage best practices, and restoration project spotlights.

The catch: it’s not available on newsstands. You get it by being a Hagerty insurance customer or buying a membership. But if you own a classic, a weekend car, or anything you plan to keep for a decade, the market data alone is worth the price of admission. Their “Hagerty Price Guide” is the industry standard for classic car valuation, and the magazine contextualizes those numbers with auction results and market analysis.

How to confirm you’re getting the full value: Before signing up, check whether your specific vehicle type is covered in their price guide. Hagerty’s coverage is deep for American muscle, Porsche, and British roadsters, but thinner for obscure Japanese imports or pre-war cars. If your project is a 1973 Datsun 240Z, their market data will help. If it’s a 1937 Cord 812, you’ll find less direct guidance. The membership also includes roadside assistance and agreed-value insurance quotes, which changes the math on whether the magazine is “free” or actually costing you money.

Grassroots Motorsports: The DIY Racer’s Bible

If you build, modify, or race your own car, Grassroots Motorsports is the most information-dense magazine still in print. Every issue contains project car updates with actual part numbers, dyno charts, and budget breakdowns. They do “challenge” events where teams build cars on a $2,000 budget, and the write-ups are brutally honest about what worked and what grenaded.

This is the one title where the print format is a genuine advantage. The technical content is dense enough that you’ll want to mark pages and return to them while you’re in the garage. Their suspension setup guides and engine swap features are reference material, not casual reading.

The practical implication for DIYers: If you’re mid-project—say, swapping a K24 into a Mazda Miata—the specific part numbers, clearance specs, and wiring notes in Grassroots Motorsports will save you hours of forum digging. But the content assumes you already have a baseline of fabrication skill. If you’ve never touched a welder or read a wiring diagram, some articles will be over your head. The magazine is best used as a project companion: subscribe when you’re actively building, not when you’re just thinking about it.

The Digital-Only Contenders Worth Your Attention

Not all great car journalism is on paper. A few digital titles have surpassed their print counterparts in specific niches:

The Drive has become the go-to for maintenance explainers and “here’s what actually goes wrong with this model” content. Their buyer’s guides are structured around common failure points, which is more useful than the typical “here are the specs” approach.

Autoblog remains solid for daily news aggregation, but their long-term test fleet updates are the hidden gem—real-world mileage, repair costs, and ownership annoyances that you won’t find in a standard road test.

Bring a Trailer doesn’t publish a magazine, but their auction listings and “BaT Stories” features are the best real-time data source for what enthusiasts are actually paying for used cars. If you’re shopping for anything interesting, their completed auction results are more reliable than any published price guide.

Expert Tips for Choosing Your Subscription

Tip 1: Match the publication to your actual garage, not your aspirational one.

If you own a 2015 Honda Civic and change your own oil, Grassroots Motorsports will teach you more than Car and Driver. If you lease a new SUV every three years and never open the hood, the opposite is true. The common mistake is subscribing to what you think an enthusiast should read rather than what matches your current projects. Be honest about whether you’re a reader, a buyer, or a builder—then choose accordingly.

Tip 2: Check the publication’s testing methodology before trusting their numbers.

Car and Driver and MotorTrend both publish instrumented test data, but they use different equipment, different weather correction factors, and different test surfaces. A 0-60 time from one isn’t directly comparable to the other. The mistake is quoting a figure without noting which publication produced it. If you’re comparing two cars, use data from the same source for both—mixing sources introduces variables you can’t account for.

Tip 3: Look for the long-term test content, not just the first-drive reviews.

First-drive reviews are essentially extended press releases—automakers fly journalists out, hand them a prepped car, and control the route. Long-term tests, where a publication buys a car and lives with it for 12 months or 20,000 miles, are where real information emerges. Car and Driver and MotorTrend both run long-term fleets. The mistake is making a purchase decision based on a first-drive review when long-term data on the same model is available. It takes five minutes to search for it, and it will tell you more than a hundred first-drive impressions.

A Quick Fit Check Before You Subscribe

Run through these five checks before committing to any subscription:

• Does the publication publish original test data, or do they repackage manufacturer claims? Look for dyno charts, instrumented test numbers, or independent measurements. If every spec in the review matches the press kit exactly, they’re not testing anything.
• Do they cover your specific interest area at least once per issue? If you’re into trucks, a sports-car-focused magazine will frustrate you. Check the last three issues’ table of contents before subscribing.
• Is the technical content accurate enough for your skill level? Skim a maintenance or repair article. If they’re explaining what a spark plug is, you’re too advanced for this title. If they’re referencing specific torque specs and part numbers, you’re in the right place.
• Does the editorial voice match how you use information? Some readers want data tables and spec sheets. Others want long-form narrative. Both are valid, but they’re not the same magazine.
• Is the digital archive searchable and included in the subscription price? Print is nice, but the ability to search back issues for a specific model review or technical article is where the real value lives. If the archive is locked behind a separate paywall, factor that into the total cost.

The Practical Verdict for 2025

There is no single “best” car magazine in 2025—there’s only the best one for how you actually interact with cars. The print industry has consolidated enough that each surviving title has a distinct, defensible identity. Car and Driver owns objective testing. Road & Track owns driving feel. Grassroots Motorsports owns the DIY builder. Hagerty owns the collector market. MotorTrend owns the broad new-car overview.

If you want the single most useful subscription for a general enthusiast, Car and Driver still delivers the highest density of verifiable, useful data per issue. If you work on your own cars, Grassroots Motorsports is the only choice that will pay for itself in saved mistakes. And if you’re shopping for something used and interesting, skip the magazine for a month and spend that money on a Bring a Trailer seller’s account instead—the auction data will tell you more about real market value than any editorial feature.

The magazines that survived the last decade did so by being genuinely good at something specific. Find the one that’s good at the thing you need, and you’ll get your money’s worth.