How has GRM survived for 40 years and counting? Because it’s cool. | Articles

40 years is a big deal. Big enough to start a sentence–indeed an entire column–with “40,” which is a thing you aren’t supposed to do according to the people who make the writing rules. But really, we shouldn’t be doing any of this, so I guess it’s okay to break a rule here and there.

As you have no doubt gathered from the columns of my colleagues, GRM, previously Auto-X and briefly using both of those titles in the world’s most complicated logo, is celebrating its 40th birthday with this issue. 

I’ve worked here for a little over 34 of those years, which is a thing that’s all at once personally wondrous and horrifying to ponder. I’ve spent 63% of my life doing this, and parts of our audience who are now full, grown-ass adults didn’t even have the common courtesy to be alive when I started here.

Wow, I’m old.

Anyway, back to none of this making sense.

See, print is dead, or at least that’s what everyone keeps telling us. And although we’ve certainly broadened our output to adapt to a changing media landscape, this magazine is still our premier bit of output. 

When so many other print outlets are shuttering, we’ve stuck it out, largely because we really don’t have anything else to do with our time and have become not only a trusted voice in our space but, weirdly, an iconoclast among media outlets that are quick to abandon good ideas as soon as the arrow temporarily points down.

But while this doesn’t make sense now–even though we’re managing to feed our families with mid-grade or better Human Chow®–it really didn’t make sense in 1984, when Tim just decided after attending a single autocross that there should be a magazine about this cool thing he just did. 

I mean, I toooootally identify with the overcommitment and falling head over heels with a cool new hobby, but just up and starting a magazine isn’t exactly buying a few too many Lego sets or getting a pet iguana.

But he did. Not because it made sense but because it seemed like the coolest thing to do at the time–which is actually a better reason to do most things, if we’re being honest. And at all those junctures where it would have been easier to say, “Nah, this isn’t working out,” and move on to something else, we’ve continually made the decision that the coolest thing was still the thing worth doing.

So celebrate along with us, because whether you’ve been here from the beginning or you just…