MotorTrend

YOU’VE COME A LONG WAY, CADDY

The very first time we attempted to identify “the” car of a particular year was in our November 1949 issue. Instead of rounding up early 1950 model cars and putting them through a rigorous testing regimen, we looked back at the year that had been and selected among the cars that had been on sale for a year, some of which we’d driven.

This was only our third issue, and we’d only “tested” two cars—an MG TC and a Studebaker Starlight Coupe (if you consider eyeballing the speedometer and clicking a stopwatch “testing”). Oh, and the aforementioned “we” wasn’t a dozen staffers John R. Bond, who would later go on to edit and publish magazine. As we still do today, we laid out the ground rules at the top of the piece:

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