Car mags co. in a major rebuild

The owner of a stable of car magazines, including Motor Trend, Automobile and Hot Rod, is shaking up its executive ranks and splitting itself in two, The Post has learned — fueling rumors that one or both of the units could end up on the selling block.

Source Interlink, which also owns the No. 2 magazinedistribution business in the US, last month slashed its operations by about 100 people and shut down Modified magazine.

In the shakeup — which may be announced as soon as Tuesday — Michael Sullivan, the current overall CEO, will become chief executive of Source Interlink Distribution.

Scott Dickey, who until December was running Competitor Media, a small publisher of specialty sports titles, will now head up the media side of the company as the CEO of Source Interlink Media.

Each unit will have a separate board of directors.

The company, after a debt restructuring last October, is now majoritycontrolled by Golden Tree Asset Management, with smaller stakes held by JPMorgan, GE Capital and Credit Suisse.

The distribution arm controls nearly a third of the US market but has been under intense pressure since at least 2012, when it lost the distribution rights to its No. 2 client, Kroger’s supermarket chain, to Jim Pattison’s News Group.

Sullivan was able to recoup some of the lost Kroger’s revenue by raiding Jim Cohen’s Hudson News and sprinting off with distribution deals with Rite Aid and CVS.

The company’s financial woes in media can be traced back to 2007, when the then-publicly traded company controlled by Ron Burkle’s Yucaipa Cos. broadened beyond its traditional base and spent $1.2 billion buying the enthusiast magazines from Henry Kravis’ Primedia.

By last year, revenues for the nowprivatized company had fallen more than 50 percent from their height, to an estimated $1.2 billion.