Pumpkin I thought I'd share with you some of my VW/Halloween spirit with a photo of the pumpkin that I carved.
Tyler Ellis
Lancaster, CA
Gripes
I've subscribed for several years and after reading almost every issue cover-to-cover I've noticed a few things.
Something that's been bugging me is the "widebody" cars you feature. It seems the term has been loosely applied to anything with fender flares slapped on.
A proper widebody would have the actual fenders extend out past the factory specs, not just some arches stuck to the bottom.
A good example would be to look at the difference between the E30 BMW 3-Series vs the E30 BMW M3. The M3 is clearly a widebody. To me, the cars you feature, with the exception of a few, have flared fenders not widebodies.
Now onto the people who complain about too many Veedubs; I agree with them, and you guys always shut them down with the same excuse that most of our readers drive VWs and that's all we can find, etc. Try doing some research and you'll see there are a ton of nicely modified BMWs that deserve to be recognized.
As for the majority of your readers being VW owners, maybe if you started featuring more brands, you'd get a more diversified readership. How do you expect to attract more subscribers if you show the same five VWs every month?
There are lots of people who modify BMWs, Volvos, Porsches, etc. Perhaps if you had a better mix, everybody would be happy. And people in the "Euro scene" would then realize there's more than Mexican-built VWs out there.
I'm not trying to put down the magazine
I look forward to it every month. But I know I'm not the only one who feels this way.Keith Nimz
Canaan, CT
In response: 1) Any car where the body is wider than stock is technically a widebody. 2) We'd love to produce a more diverse magazine but it's not that simple. The number of readers we lose by featuring something other than, say, a VW or BMW is not equal to the number of readers we gain by featuring a Volvo or whatever. Despite this, we try to have a variety of cars, such as the S40 and Z4 in this issue.
Likes
I have to say you guys are doing such a terrific job. I started reading my brother's subscription four years ago. When he moved out, I renewed the sub in my name when I found I couldn't last a month without seeing what was going on in the Euro tuning world. I have almost completed my three-year sub and just renewed for a second three-year term.
I have to commend you for the diversity of both your feature cars and Readers' Rides. I constantly read letters complaining that you don't show enough of this, or too much of that, but I'm pleased to see you don't take it to heart. I know there are a limited number of nicely tuned cars to choose from, and if some are more common than others, they're going to appear more often. Get over it!
My ideology is if you want to see something different in the magazine, build it yourself and try to get a feature!
I love Swedish vehicles, and I'm not complaining because there aren't enough of them. In fact, I remember several extremely well done Saabs and Volvos appearing within the covers of et. Within the last year, there was Matthew Vocks' Volvo Amazon Wagon, Kaylan Marie's Saab 9000 Aero, plus an issue with almost nothing but Volvos in Readers' Rides.
It would be really cool to see a tuning guide on the Saab 2.3T engine. There are a lot of us out here, and it can be tricky to know where to start looking for performance upgrades. Not every magazine features these kinds of cars, so I commend you again for including them when much of the interest is elsewhere.
Micah WashburnEast Thetford, VT
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