In 2020 Indie Auto posted a story about how to purchase back issues of Automobile Quarterly. All of the links I included are now dead, so yesterday a reader inquired: “Looking to buy prints from Automobile Quarterly if these are still available.”
One can find back issues through a variety of used-book sellers, but I would be inclined to start with the Library & Research Center of the Antique Automobile Club of America. Their website currently states that they have “duplicate issues.” For details, contact “library staff for more information, or to get on the waiting list!” (AACA, 2024).
This service strikes me as a good example of why building the capacity of auto history organizations is important. Even the best-run volunteer groups are going to have limitations in what they can accomplish compared to an organization with modern facilities and a paid staff.
That said, I have thus far not drawn from the AACA’s digital library nearly as much as other sources. For example, their collection of automotive advertisements is more technically advanced than those of the Old Car Advertisements or the Automotive History Preservation Society, but it’s usually not as comprehensive. In addition, the way the AACA organizes its content strikes me as being the most convoluted. Thus, I generally start elsewhere when trying to track down an ad.
Each digital library has weaknesses
Truth be told, each of the digital libraries has meaningful weaknesses. Old Car Advertisements tends have the most comprehensive selection of ads from American makes, but their reproductions can sometimes be lower quality, e.g., the image is too small to read text or the bottom of the page is cut off.
The Automotive History Preservation Society used to have a big advantage over Old Car Advertisements when it came to marketing materials from foreign makes and newer model years, but since it moved to a new website late last year it still does not appear to have reposted all of its content.
A relatively new entry has been Over-Drive. It started off as a glossy magazine but appears to have pivoted to emphasizing a web-based library that includes ads, brochures, road tests and documentation such as AMA specification sheets. This is a promising one-stop source of information, but Over-Drive is not yet comprehensive enough that I rely upon it.
I am old school when it comes to tracking down car specifications, so I will tend to reach for a reference book such as one of the Standard catalogs or American Cars series. When I bump up against information gaps or possible errors I then tend to go to The Classic Car Database. However, the data isn’t always complete (or accurate) and it only goes up to 1975. Automobile Catalog goes to the present day and includes foreign makes, but can also have information gaps and inaccuracies that all but beg for double checking.
Is AROnline’s purchase a model for U.S. auto history?
Earlier this month AROnline announced that it had been purchased by a museum called the Great British Car Journey.
Richard Usher, founder of the museum, said that “AROnline is a ready-made archive of the history behind the majority of our exhibits, and it is a site I have been visiting for more years than I care to admit. It made absolute sense to acquire the site and give our visitors and club members access to even more of the UK’s very rich automotive history” (Adams, 2024).
Also see ‘Demise of AROnline raises question: Should more be done to preserve content?’
That sounds like a pretty good fit — and it made me wonder whether the U.S. auto history media might benefit from similar consolidation. As a case in point, how long can the field adequately support at least four major sources of automotive marketing materials?
Given the individualistic tendencies of the auto history field, my guess is that it could take some retirements and perhaps a recession to spur a round of consolidation, but perhaps it can help to talk about the possibilities.
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
- AACA; 2024. “AACA Library & Research Center.” Antique Automobile Club of America. Accessed April 23.
- Adams, Keith; 2024. “News : A new home for AROnline.” AROnline. Posted April 2.
Well, Steve. I believe I commented on this topic a couple of months back, but this bears repeating.
Within our hallowed enthusiast community resides lots of essentially selfish people who want to hoard as much information as possible with the ultimate objective of making that information so valuable that un-Godly amounts of money will need to change hands in order to separate that treasure trove from their grease-stained hands.
Don’t get me wrong. I am all in favor of such big organizations as AACA, Classic Car Club of America, Automotive Research Library, Simeone Foundation or Detroit Public Library National Automotive History Collection holding on to their extensive collections. But wouldn’t it be sensible to get all the various organizations together to provide a cooperative resource dedicated to automotive history? Is all of it digitized for ease of access? No. Is it difficult to access this information without traveling to a location, and paying for reading room time and copies? Ha! Would I travel halfway across the country so I could spend two hours in a room with stacks of books to learn something I need for a research article I want to write in the year 2040? Eventually, all that material will be under the care of people who have no personal attachment to the automobile and its historic place in American culture. It will be an arduous task to maintain all that paper, boxes and miles of shelving. No one will care. And our automotive history will disappear, just like that.
Jim, I think it would be great if even a few of these groups would band together to digitize American automotive history and make it more readily available. I am not deeply connected enough to understand the politics of individual organizations so mainly look at the situation from the standpoint of an end user. However, I do wonder about certain things.
For example, why is there both an Automotive History Preservation Society and an Over-Drive Materials Preservation Foundation? What were the dynamics that led either to do their own thing rather than work through the AACA?
The Old Car Advertisements/Brochures websites strike me as being the most advanced in developing an ad base. I have no idea how lucrative it is, but in general this kind of revenue has been increasingly shaky for American publications. So at some point might the Old Car folks want to sell their operation? It would be best for the auto history field if a nonprofit took over their archives, so which one might plausibly have the greatest capacity to do so?
Here is the big problem: Major urban libraries are PURGING their stacks of periodicals, including their collections of “Automobile Quarterly”. (It has happened in Indianapolis over the past three months.) Nobody in charge cares about this, and these publications will neither be digitized or microfisched.
Which speaks to my point that in the future there won’t be people who view automotive history as enthusiasts, recognizing how the development of the automobile has so dramatically impacted our culture and the world as a whole. That simple appreciation can’t be duplicated by an archivist who is charged with “clearing this space” so more boxes and containers of materials can be warehoused and eventually discarded the same way all those old car buff publications were to make room for even more of those boxes and containers ad nauseum. Do the major enthusiast organizations recognize this future? Do they care?
ABE books is a great source for copies of Automobile Quarterly if that would help