Rating  - Probably the best of the mainstream US car mags
I've subscribed to C&D reasonably consistently for about 10 years. I've periodically let my subscription expire for a few months at a time (mainly because I'm too lazy to renew) and have periodically subscribed to (or picked up at the mewstand) other US car magazines like Road & Track, Motortrend, Autoweek, etc., but keep finding myself coming back to C&D. C&D is clearly superior to those I just mentioned, in my opinion.
There are, however, a few magazines out there - like the UK's EVO and CAR, that may be better than C&D from some points of view (better photography, great reviews of a lot of exclusive sports cars I'll never get my hands on), but those publications are very pricey and they don't have as much information on mainstream cars you can buy in the US.
What I like: Good all around magazine. The road tests and comparison tests are generally very good, and reviews are generally chock full of tables of data (acceleration times, pricing, etc.). It's reasonably well written and, generally speaking, when you read a review you get a sense that the editor/reviewer knows what he's talking about (this isn't the case for some of C&D's competitors, unfortunately).
What I don't like so much: The comparison test results aren't always, ahem, all that unbiased (or at least they sometimes don't come across that way). Also, C&D is a car magazine - too many pages are spent on booooring SUVs and Crossovers. One other negative is that C&D just recently (a few months ago) changed their format somewhat - I liked the old format much better and there really was no reason to change, but this is just a minor gripe.
I give C&D 4 stars. Right now I subscribe to C&D and EVO, and I think that's a great combo - EVO for the great photography and articles about high end sports cars, while C&D provides good general information about more mainstream cars you can buy in the states. I doubt I'll ever not have a C&D subscription for any length of time.
Rating  - The standard by which all others are judged
Car and Driver is the quintessential automotive publication. The format is very user-friendly and the reporting accurate, leaving sensationalism to the other publications. That being said, the magazine is not what it once was. As others have updated their style and photography, most notably Motor Trend, Car and Driver soldiers on with its now-familiar format. And the recent departure of Brock Yates, second only to David E. Davis in automotive journalism god-ness, the magazine moves in the wrong direction. Time will tell whether Csabe Csere (the editor) can restore its preeminence.
Rating - No mysteries here. Just solid car talk.
As your grandfather told you, you can't always judge a book by its cover. Nor, these days, does the title of a magazine always clue you into the content that begins on page three.
Refreshing, then, to page through an issue of CAR AND DRIVER and find that --still crazy after all these years--it's *still* about cars and drivers.
Don't get me wrong; the usual suspects do appear month after month in columns that dig into one aspect or another of the auto industry. And there are those ubiquitous pages of ads from the major auto producers and the after-market confectioners of shiny things to bolt onto them.
But everything else is about cars and the people who drive them. To be slightly more accurate: about cars, written by and for the people who drive them.
A fair number of pages are given over to the exotic and performo varieties of the four-wheeled and the fast. But CAR AND DRIVER displays no embarrassment about majoring on the cars that the rest of us drive. Or might drive or might choose never to drive, given due attention to the reviews put into the hands of drivers like this reviewer by drivers who drive for a living.
'Wanna' know what Madonna drives? Buy another magazine.
'Wanna' know what's new in the '07 Chevies, Fords, and Bimmers? That would be CAR AND DRIVER.
Rating  - Can be so very good but.......
Audi Audi Audi Audi Mercedes Porsche Lamborghini Maserattie Jaguar... oh, better toss in a couple $40,000 Japanese cars...
Then, snuck between the huge number of "dream machines" 98 percent of us could never afford, will be a report about a car for the common folks.
I sure miss the content from the mid-70s to the early-80s.
In my never humble opinion Car & Driver has slid downhill.
Also, the immense ego of the writing staff, editors, everybody tossing their 4-cents into the fray causes me to groan in rapt disgust. Ain't no "common folk" working or writing for Car & Driver!!!!!
Hey, it's their magazine. Of course they can put whatever they want between the front and back covers. However, I can shun their magazine and look elsewhere for auto/truck information, opinions, tests, etc.
I do revel in finding old copies of Car & Driver in the thrift stores. Sure is a shame their content has become so "uppity" with the, to me, obvious nose-in-the-air snobbishness as the writers drive those cars whose price is close to the gross national prodduct of many 3rd-world countries while us commoners scyrry around in our puny putrid commonermobiles.
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