We just got off the phone with one of our sources inside the Source Interlink monolith who informed us that some of Sport Compact Car’s staff was laid off yesterday and that the February issue may be the last SCC you’ll find on newsstands. The death of SCC follows Source Interlink’s execution of Turbo earlier this year, and reports suggest that 115 employees inside the company have been given the boot and more titles could be axed in the future.
Sport Compact Car was the go-to title for gearheads obsessed with small displacement engines, forced induction, number crunching and the black arts of ECU and suspension tuning, with a dedicated focus on down-and-dirty tech, unique reviews, stellar writing and going fast on a budget. Both the page count and circulation numbers have dropped over the last five years, although according to our sources, ad revenue was up and distribution was holding steady.
On a personal note, SCC was the magazine that got this scribe hooked on driving and the finer points of air-to-fuel ratios, provided me with my first freelance gig and inspired me – primarily through the writings of Dave Coleman, Josh Jacquot, Mike Kojima, Andy Hope, James Tate, John Pearley Huffman and Jared Holstein, among many others – to pursue my dream of writing about cars. SCC will be sorely missed and the world is truly a worse place without it.
Hit the jump to see a list of everyone who has made Sport Compact Car possible over the last two decades.
UPDATE: We’ve gotten word that Truck Trend has also been canned. According to our commentators on the inside of Truck Trend, the mag hasn’t been cancelled – it’s being “restructured.”
Source Interlink are Fags and I have no idea what the helll they are doing behind their doors but I’m thinking they are purely money hungry and because of that fact they lost advertisers.
For those who don’t know, SOurce Interlink has THEE highest advertising rates in automotive mags. Motortrend full page ads are over 15Gs a month. I don’t know what SCC ads were costed at but I will find out and post up numbers.
IMO< I think SCC was losing ground hugely to Modified Mag for the past 2+ years. Their issues were getting smaller and the content sucked. Will this mean the Modified is next on the block? They are also under Source Interlink now. I sure as hell hope not. Given that some of their biggest writers left months ago, you wonder what the hell is happening to our beloved magazines.