Media

It’s car mags’ time to shine ahead of NYC’s auto show

The New York International Auto Show pulls into town on Friday (traffic permitting — and if it doesn’t ship the cars into Penn Station via Amtrak), so naturally our thoughts shift to those four-wheeled beasts that clog up our streets.

So we turned to two car magazines (Car and Driver and Motor Trend) to get the low-down on the latest in car talk.

The May issue of Hearst’s C&D is by far the better choice. Editor-in Chief Eddie Alterman has a well-tuned publication, offering up car reviews that can be enjoyed by both the enthusiast and those who simply ride around town in an Uber.

A review of the rear-engine, 647-horsepower 2017 Ford GT made us want to go out and order one. The $450,000 price tag changed our mind.

The columnists — like Ezra Dyer and John Phillips — are exemplary.

Features Editor Jeff Sabatini even takes on President Trump’s claims that he will rip up NAFTA. Sabatini explains how hard that will be given how, over the treaty’s 23 years, car-part sourcing has become so dependent on Mexico and Canada. It’s an important read.

We are reminded that perhaps President Trump has moved off his declaration that NAFTA is the worst treaty signed in the history of the US. After meeting with GM Chief Executive Mary Barra in February, Trump said, “I learned a lot about the automobile business.”

Motor Trend, from The Enthusiat Network, is written and edited much more for the enthusiast. It also lacks a lot of the passion its newsstand rival brings to its stories. For example, a story about the crazy, off-road capabilities of the Ram 2500 Power Wagon reads like a technical instruction manual rather than a you-are-there, real-life, boulder encounter.

“With an approach angle of 33.6 degrees,” the story explains, without explaining a thing about how steep that is. Brace yourself against the dashboard steep? John Glenn in a Mercury rocket steep?

We did like the Garage feature that checked in on long-term road tests. Great everyman insight — and we’re glad writer Erick Ayapana emerged (we assume) without a scratch after crashing his Miata MX-5 tester into a Lincoln MKX.

The New Yorker’s cover story puts the reader in an imaginary world where everyone loves Canadian author Margaret Atwood and sees her 1985 book “The Handmaid’s Tale” as visionary. In her book, Atwood describes the fictional dangers of living in a Christian fundamentalist regime, “Gilead,” where women are property.

The profile is so fawning it is as fantastical as her book. Reporter Rebecca Mead says cops nod in approval when she walks by them in her hometown of Toronto. That’s just the start as we get pages on her life history, and little about what the book’s actual relevance is to today’s Trump world.

The Talk of The Town lead item in this week’s issue comments on Trump’s airstrikes in Syria, comparing the potential problematic nature of getting involved in Syria to President Barack Obama’s difficulties in Libya.

We liked the interview with Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli who takes credit for sparking the successful SEC investigation into Steve Cohen’s SAC Capital.

Time was published too late to cover Trump’s Syrian airstrikes making it seem a bit behind, especially considering its lead news item is about the president’s “incredible shrinking power.”

Still, the newsweekly is focused on Trump’s foreign policy and the potential for war. Harvard Professor Graham Allison writes that China is girding for war and unless Trump is careful, there will likely be a war over North Korea.

Time’s cover story reveals how ISIS, or anyone else for that matter, can buy a dirty bomb in the lawless part of the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

The magazine has a nice rendering of how the Kushner family plans to reconfigure 666 Fifth Ave.

The Post’s Lois Weiss on Saturday reported that Vornado Realty for the first time had publicly admitted it might be selling its holding in the iconic building.