The Road Rat is a fairly new journal that attempts – very successfully, we think – to overhaul the conventional model of the car magazine.
And we stress ‘overhaul’ rather trying soup the thing up. It’s less interested in technical detail and performance. The Road Rat instead firmly believes there are many interesting and untold stories located in both the past and the present, on the road and on the race track. And, most pleasingly, The Road Rat is a proudly analogue thing: a lush, beautiful, valuable, collectable and exquisitely crafted magazine.
About issue 17 from the publisher:
Edition 17 — aka ‘Tales from Japan’ — is the latest Road Rat special to devote its entirety to getting under the skin of one subject. Across well over 200 pages our writers, photographers and illustrators dissect Japanese culture, technology and design and their symbiotic relationship with Japanese automobiles with a focus on the Skyline GT-R and Lexus LFA. The cover star is the delicate and beautiful Toyota 2000GT and it’s joined inside by a study of the Kei car phenomena, Mazda’s rotary-engine endurance cars, the very different Toyotas Century and Land Cruiser plus your guide to subcultures from cosplaying itasha to street-racing kanjozoku.