The Print Run

Who writes this

A journal about motoring on paper, published in issues.

What it covers

Almost everything written about old cars is about the cars. The paper they generated - the brochures, the workshop manuals, the race posters, the yearbooks and the road tests - gets treated as packaging for the real subject. It is not. It is where the design history is, and a great deal of the social history too.

The Print Run covers printing, illustration, photography and publishing, with cars as the subject matter rather than the point. If you came here for compression ratios you will be disappointed. If you have ever picked up a 1963 catalogue and wondered why it feels the way it does, this is for you.

Who writes it

Duncan Ashby has been buying motoring paper at autojumbles and house clearances for about twenty years, and has considerably more of it than the available shelving justifies. He is not a dealer, a valuer or an archivist, and nothing here should be mistaken for any of those.

What it is not

Nothing is sold here. There is no shop, no valuation service and no brokerage. Where a piece links out it is because the material is worth seeing, and nobody has paid for the mention.

Attributions of artists and printers are given as accurately as the sources allow, which in commercial print of this period is often not very accurately at all. Corrections are welcome.