DRAG AND DROP

I HAVE been a subscriber for almost 15 years now. I have always just flicked past the stuff I don’t like, but lately I have found myself flicking past most of the articles, as this mag has become overwhelmingly drag/burnout-focussed.

I decided to do some stats on the past seven months and this is what I came up with: Six out of seven cover cars and 21 out of 53 feature cars were drag/burnout cars, and not a single hot rod in sight. On average, 55 per cent of the magazine is about drags and burnouts, with January having 65 per cent.

In SMOTY, of the 16 finalists picked by you guys, nine were drag/burnout cars (and 10 were Holdens). Now, look at the readers’ cars; how many of them are drag cars? They’re all cruisers.

In the July 2017 issue someone mentioned bringing an event like the Optima Street Challenge here, and, to quote Telfo: “We’ve had something like that on the backburner for a long time.” Why? So you can do another Drag Challenge in Queensland. To top it all off, in the January issue Telfo spent his whole write-up talking about drags, to then sign off with: “Drags aren’t for everyone – SM is a broad church to reflect an incredibly varied scene.” That may be true, but you drip-feed us small amounts of stuff in a sea of burnouts and drags.

I challenge you to do a whole magazine with no drag/burnout-related material whatsoever. I would love to see a Mill Of The Month where it’s not just a big-cube, mega-horsepower drag motor. There is a whole Street Sprint series in South East Queensland, not to mention hillclimbs and amateur rallying, drifting, historic races, and yet over 70 per cent of your articles are about drags. There are enough cars at Summernats every year to easily fill the mag with a diverse range of stuff, but you keep gravitating to the same thing.

You have 10 months – if it doesn’t change I won’t be renewing my subscription. Dion Benis, email