Description
Collector's Note – Why This Issue Matters
The September 1949 issue of Motor Trend is not merely an early issue of an important magazine — it is among the very first issues ever published, appearing in the founding year of what would become America's most influential automotive periodical. The cover subject, the Kurtis Sport Car, was itself a landmark machine. Frank Kurtis was one of the most innovative custom car builders and race car constructors in postwar America, and his sports car represented exactly the kind of forward-thinking, performance-oriented design that the magazine was created to champion. In 1949, American car culture stood at a genuine inflection point: the austerity of the war years was giving way to a surge of enthusiasm for speed, custom design, and the European sports car idiom that returning GIs had encountered abroad. The Kurtis Sport Car embodied that energy — a handbuilt, performance-focused machine in a market still dominated by large, conservative Detroit iron. Collectors tracking the roots of American sports car culture and postwar automotive design will find the broader original magazines from 1949 an essential window into this pivotal transitional moment.
The editorial ambition of this issue extends well beyond the cover. The table of contents reads like a manifesto for postwar automotive enthusiasm: coverage of the Bridgehampton Road Race, a feature on the International Sport Car Show, an analysis of emerging threats to the dominant Offenhauser racing engine, and a design forecast from Colonel Alexis de Sakhnoffsky — a genuine giant of American industrial and automotive design whose visionary work for coachbuilders and manufacturers had made him one of the most recognized names in the field. The "Trends in Design" and "Trend of the Future" features reflect the magazine's founding editorial premise: that automotive design was not just engineering but culture, worthy of serious analytical attention. For collectors of automotive print history, the full archive of original Motor Trend magazine issues documents the complete arc of that conversation across more than seven decades.
About the Publication
Motor Trend was founded in 1949 by Robert Petersen and Walt Woron in Los Angeles, California — a city that was already emerging as the geographic and cultural center of American car enthusiasm. From its first issue, the magazine positioned itself as a serious automotive journal aimed at performance enthusiasts, custom car builders, and readers who understood the automobile as something more than transportation. Its editorial mix combined race coverage, design analysis, road tests, and custom car features, reflecting the full breadth of the postwar automotive subculture that Petersen's publishing empire would do so much to shape. By the 1950s it had become one of the most widely read automotive magazines in the country, but its September 1949 premiere issue predates all of that institutional authority — it is the founding document of an enterprise that would define American car journalism for generations.
Key Highlights Inside
- "Why Motor Trend?" — Editorial (p. 5): The magazine's founding editorial statement, in which the editors articulate their purpose and vision for the publication — a primary document for anyone researching the origins of American automotive journalism.
- "International Sport Car Show" — G. H. Borgesen (p. 8): Coverage of one of the early postwar gatherings that brought European sports car culture into direct contact with American enthusiasts, accelerating the development of a domestic sports car market.
- "Bridgehampton Road Race" — Hank Ogden (p. 11): Race reporting from Bridgehampton, one of the early road circuits that helped establish road racing as a serious American motorsport discipline in the years before permanent circuits were widely available.
- "Threat to the Offies" — Robert R. Barker (p. 12): An analysis of emerging challenges to the Offenhauser engine's dominance in American open-wheel racing — a technically informed piece reflecting the magazine's serious motorsport coverage from its very first issue.
- "Trend of the Future" — Col. Alexis de Sakhnoffsky (p. 16): A design forecast from one of the most celebrated automotive stylists of the prewar and postwar era, whose contributions to American car design made his byline a genuine draw for serious readers.
- "Restyling a '41 Ford" (p. 21) and "Custom Creations" (p. 28): Features documenting the custom car culture that was flourishing in Southern California and spreading nationally — early print documentation of a movement that would define American car culture through the 1950s and beyond.
Condition & Rarity
A surviving copy of Motor Trend's September 1949 premiere issue in any condition is a significant find. Magazines from a publication's founding year are always underrepresented in the collector market simply because so few were saved — they had no established reputation yet, no reason for a casual reader to treat them as keepsakes. Copies grading Acceptable — with noticeable cover creases, marks, and possible minor rips, but with interior pages remaining intact and readable — are entirely consistent with what survives from this era and this type of enthusiast publication. The cover wear is expected; what matters for research and documentation purposes is page integrity, and a copy with good readable interiors preserves the full editorial content of this founding issue. The absence of a mailing label is a positive attribute, indicating newsstand rather than subscription origin and avoiding the label damage that affects so many periodicals of this vintage. A plastic protective sleeve suggests the copy has been stored with some awareness of its significance.
Looking for More Issues Like This?
A premiere issue of Motor Trend from 1949 is about as foundational as automotive collecting gets, and copies surface rarely enough that finding one in any condition takes patience. If this issue has already moved on, the full run of original Motor Trend magazine issues spans the complete history of the publication and is well worth browsing for landmark covers and milestone issues. The 1949 magazine collection also offers a broader look at postwar print culture across automotive and other subjects for collectors building a picture of that pivotal year.