You may have noticed we've been busy revamping the look and feel of Sport Compact Car over the last few months. Not just with the magazine, but our website as well. For those of you who haven't been paying attention, here's a look at what's new:
Redesigned Sheetmetal
You're on page 14. Notice anything different so far? How about the way this column is laid out? This is the third issue since SCC went under the skillful scalpel of art director Jong Cadelina. He thought SCC was looking kinda dated. And he would be the one to know-our man Cadelina served as SCC's art director from 1997 to 2004, before his recent return.
Beyond giving your mag a facelift, he also gave it some much-needed style, implementing a few critical changes that make it much more readable. Design geeks and those with bad eyes will appreciate the new font we use for all our text, as well as the clean and modern templates for our regular departments. I think it looks pretty good, but who cares what I think? My e-mail address is below, and I'd appreciate some feedback. Better yet, cc jong.cadelina@sorc.com too. He's a big boy, he can take it.
More Power Online
Regular visitors to our website have seen a dramatic change as well. The entire www.sportcompactcarweb.com site has been completely redesigned from top to bottom, primarily due to Primedia's acquisition of Automotive.com. What this means to you is that a company with a real understanding of how the web works is now powering our website.
Everything is still kind of new and we're working out the kinks, but all the good stuff is there. Much of our traffic comes from the home tuners and wrenches logging on to research our past technical stories, particularly our project car builds. We're working to get them all up there, so if you can't find what you're looking for, please just drop me a line.
You don't even have to fire up your Gmail or Outlook account to do so-just do it from the site. Since going live, I've been getting a ton of web mail directly to my mailbox, including a whole lot of Project J-body requests (see The Last Word, page 138).
New Fuel
Those two changes were easy to spot, but it would take a mildly disturbing stalker to notice the little Texaco icons that have been popping up here and there throughout the magazine.
Our Project Car Garage update (page 110) explains the situation in greater detail, but essentially it goes like this: Primedia's most influential magazines, including Motor Trend, Automobile, Motorcyclist, Truckin' and Dirt Rider, have all have entered into a partnership with Texaco.
Wherever you see the logo means the car or cars reviewed in that article used gasoline from Texaco, or its parent company, Chevron.
This issue, the logo appears on our reviews of the Just Driven ipd Volvo S40 (page 38) and Dodge Caliber R/T (page 40), and in our Project Car Garage update as well.
Change is necessary, change is good. I welcome our new look, powerful online engine and an official fuel and hope you do too. Enjoy the issue.