Top Gear Magazine/UK
Top Gear is the name of a British automotive magazine produced continuously by Immediate Media Company (formerly BBC Worldwide and initially by Redwood Publishing for its first few issues) since September of 1993. It accompanied a long-running TV show of the same name until its March 2002 issue, before resuming under the relaunched programme from its November 2002 issue onwards.
History
Jeremy Clarkson had already made a name for himself as writer of the successful Performance Car Magazine, and the BBC were understandably looking for a way to replicate this success for their own benefit. As a result, Top Gear Magazine launched for the month of October 1993, and quickly became the most successful magazine of its type. It would eventually lose ground towards the end of original lead editor Kevin Blick's tenure to rivals such as Max Power, but would bounce back under the lead of Michael Harvey. Conor McNicholas would briefly take over to much media fanfare, but would soon quit not long thereafter. Charlie Turner has been the magazine's lead editor since McNicholas' departure in 2010.
Sales figures
At one point in time, the magazine was Britain's best-selling automotive magazine, peaking with more than 200,000 issues sold worldwide each month from the first half of 2008 through to the second half of 2009. Sales then remained over 190,000 copies per month for the next 18 months thereafter.
Decline in readership
Beginning from the second half of 2011, sales began a slow, yet gradual decline. In 2012 for instance, sales were down by a quarter of their all-time high. Following the dismissal of long term presenter Jeremy Clarkson in March 2015, sales figures of the magazine were likewise as impacted as television ratings, with just 90,000[1] copies sold in the United Kingdom for the first half of 2016, with an additional 10,000 international sales. Sales partially recovered following Evans' departure from Top Gear, stagnating at 100,000[2] for the entirety of 2018, but fell once more to just 80,000[3] the year after. By 2020, sales had fallen further[4] to just 60,000 issues worldwide.
