From the archives of Bob Montgomery, motoring historian
SPEED: Next time you buy a motor magazine from the vast range on display at your local newsagents pause for a moment to remember a short-lived, unsuccessful motor magazine that appeared briefly like a blazing comet in the mid-1930s and left a legacy to the innumerable motor magazines that were to follow it.
The magazine was simply called Speed and it appeared on the newsstands in Britain and Ireland between 1935 and 1938. It was the creation of Alan C Hess who would later become well-known for a number of books about his motoring travel adventures. What set Speed apart from the already burgeoning array of motor magazines was its art direction. For the first time here was a motor magazine that wasn't simply filled with lots of text, the occasional badly-taken and badly-reproduced photograph and art direction which had probably been unchanged since its launch. Speed bristled with great art direction, excellent photographs - often reproduced to full-page size - something almost unheard of in its rivals, and snappy text which held the reader's attention.
As well as all of the above, Speed introduced motoring art to it's readers. Whether it was the series of full-page cartoons of famous racing drivers - 'Speed Lines' by Fred Wilkin, or the wonderful 'scraperboard' illustrations of R P Brockbank, later to become famous as a motoring cartoonist, Speed dazzled with its artwork. But most of all it was the work of its resident artist H J Moser which gave Speed its identity. Moser was responsible for the striking full colour covers that appeared on Speed each month and which were a complete contrast to the two colour covers which were the best its opposition could aspire to each month.
Moser's covers for Speed are justly famous but he contributed much more than these covers to the magazine. A series of promotional illustrations by Moser given away free with the magazine are now highly-prized collectors items and it is widely believed that Moser also acted as art director for the magazine determining the lay-out of each issue.
But Speed was a magazine ahead of its time and almost from the start it was in financial difficulties. Its main rival was Motor Sport magazine first established as The Brooklands Gazette in 1924. Motor Sport was already well established as 'the magazine of record' when Speed appeared on the scene. Despite the imprimatur of the British Racing Drivers' Club who made it their official publication, Speed stumbled from financial crisis to financial crisis.
In 1937, its last year of publication, it doubled its cover price in a vain attempt to stave off the inevitable at a time when Motor Sport magazine undercut its cover price by almost 100 per cent. When the end came, it was sudden and unexpected. A brief announcement in Motor Sport in early 1938 baldly stated that it had acquired Speed and a masthead which now simply read 'incorporating Speed'.
While Motor Sport magazine is still with us, Speed passed into legend and is today most highly prized by collectors for its innovative design and content and particularly its wonderfully vivid covers from the brush of H J Moser.
Today's multitude of motor magazines owe much to the flamboyant design of Speed, even if few of them are aware of the fact.