There’s a lot to report now that the news is public: Autocade is more than the online encyclopædia, it’s also a print yearbook. I’m happy to say it has been launched, after ironing out some tech issues, and there has been good interest in the new publication.
You can read a bit more about it in our press release, and you can order it on our new e-commerce store at lucire.biz, a domain name I registered many years ago.
The Yearbook has some great facts and features, and I’m very delighted to say it has had the endorsements of William Woollard (Top Gear, Tomorrow’s World, Rally Report, Horizon, The Reluctant Buddhist) and award-winning motoring writer and author Giles Chapman (the Dorling Kindersley car volumes, My Dad Had One of Those, Britain’s Toy Car Wars, Mini: 60 Years, Classic and Sportscar, Your Classic, Autocar), as well as my dear friend Stanley Moss (not just Lucire, but a well known branding guru and author in his own right, including the Global Brand Letter, What Is a Brand?, The Hacker, and his many contributions to NYC’s The Bomb).
Amanda and I believed we could do something with the Autocade brand given the traffic that the site gets, and we began developing the idea earlier in 2023. I remembered the car annuals of my youth, and fortunately, Giles made the same comparison in his endorsement: ‘Autocade is in the grand tradition of beautifully produced annuals like World Cars, Car Design Yearbook, Autocourse and Auto Universum, yet offers a deep read for the road car devotee like nothing else I’ve seen.’
I really missed those annuals and firmly believed there is room for one for the 2020s. In addition, with Autocade being an encyclopædia, we had to cover both classic and new cars, and put a twist on how we looked at the car world. Therefore, there’s a feature on car market trends, stories on the Citroën 2CV, Lamborghini Miura, Aston Martin DB5 and Volvo EM90, as well as stories on marketing, art, and upcoming models. What I always found fascinating with Autocade is our analyses on lineages, and some encyclopædia content about them has made it into the book.
Creating the template was incredibly time-consuming but we got there. Having identified a UK printer—we didn’t want to be trapped by exorbitant postage from New Zealand—we worked toward a December release.
Have a look below at the level of detail that went in to making the prose right. I regard myself as a pretty decent writer but Amanda got to work with her edits to the editorial. This is how much effort went into just two of the pages.
As the first press release outlines, the original idea for taking Autocade into print goes back to 2011, when Keith Adams and I first looked into it (Keith had contributed entries himself to the site). Back then we gave some thought to replicating the encyclopædia in print, but that would have been a herculean task that would date while being compiled.
That’s now two titles I’ve taken from a web existence into print. When I did it with Lucire, it was unprecedented. This time, 19 years on, technology has really aided us, though getting an editorial mix right took time. I think we’ve cracked it, and it’s a wonderful, fun read—as well as being a well designed visual delight that’s both informative and entertaining.
At just £14·99 for now (plus postage, and tax where applicable), I really hope you enjoy this new labour of love.
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