Motor Trend

Motor Trend is an American automobile magazine. It first appeared in September 1949, issued by Petersen Publishing Company in Los Angeles, and bearing the tagline "The Magazine for a Motoring World". Petersen Publishing was sold to British publisher EMAP in 1998, who sold the former Petersen magazines to Primedia in 2001. As of 2007, it is published by TEN: The Enthusiast Network (formerly Source Interlink Media). It has a monthly circulation of over one million readers.

Contents and Sections

The contents of Motor Trend magazines are divided up into sections, or departments.

Road Tests

Motor Trend magazine provides its readers with written "road tests" of vehicles. These road tests are published monthly, and are meant to give readers information about the featured vehicle, certain aspects of the vehicle, and what the readers can expect if the featured vehicle is purchased. For example, if Motor Trend road-tested the Cadillac Escalade, the road test article would provide its readers with information about the Cadillac Escalade, and what they could expect if they bought one for themselves.

1969 Motor Trend 500

The 1969 Motor Trend 500 was a NASCAR Grand National Series (now Sprint Cup Series) event that was held on February 1, 1969 at Riverside International Raceway in Riverside, California.

The race car drivers still had to commute to the races using the same stock cars that competed in a typical weekend's race through a policy of homologation (and under their own power). This policy was in effect until roughly 1975. By 1980, NASCAR had completely stopped tracking the year model of all the vehicles and most teams did not take stock cars to the track under their own power anymore.

Summary

One hundred and eighty-six laps were done on a paved road course spanning 2.7 miles (4.3 km). Although A.J. Foyt won the pole position with a qualifying speed of 110.323 miles per hour (177.548 km/h), Richard Petty would win the race by beating Foyt with a margin of 25 seconds using a 1969 Ford Torino vehicle. More than forty-six thousand fans would watch the race live to see 44 vehicles start (and only 13 of them finish the race). Most of the DNFs were caused by engine issues.Ford vehicles and Chevrolet vehicles made up most of the starting grid. Other notable drivers included: LeeRoy Yarbrough (who would be the highest finishing driver with an engine problem), Ray Elder, Neil Castles, Mario Andretti (his final start), and Elmo Langley. West Coast racer Marty Kinerk made his NASCAR Cup Series debut at this event. However, he would only compete at two races before leaving for the NASCAR Winston West Series (now K&N Pro Series West).

1971 Motor Trend 500

The 1971 Motor Trend 500 was the first official race in NASCAR's Winston Cup era (also known as the Winston Cup Grand National Series until approximately 1985) that took place on January 10, 1971. Drivers had to contend with 191 laps on a road course at Riverside International Raceway in Riverside, California, USA that spanned a total distance of 2.620 miles (4.216 km). Many people who followed NASCAR during the 1960s and the 1970s found Riverside International Raceway to be one of their favorite "road course" tracks.

Despite its connections to Big Tobacco, the Winston Cup era in NASCAR ended up becoming the most popular among traditionalists and racing purists alike. Attendance for this racing event was estimated at 23,000 people. It took four hours, fifty-seven minutes, and fifty-five seconds for the race to resolve itself from the first green flag to the checkered flag. No tickets were required to tour certain places of the track (particularly on the area of the track that was near the chicanes). NASCAR would tighten up their security in the later years; requiring patrons to have special passes to attend pit road prior to the race.