Motor Trend

Motor Trend is an American automobile magazine. It first appeared in September 1949, issued by Petersen Publishing Company in Los Angeles, and bearing the tag line "The Magazine for a Motoring World". Petersen Publishing was sold to British publisher EMAP in 1998, who sold the former Petersen magazines to Primedia in 2001. As of 2007, it is published by Source Interlink. It has a monthly circulation of over one million readers.

One of the earliest and most enduring of the magazine's creations was its Car of the Year award, given almost continuously since its inception, although the phrase itself would not become entrenched until well into the 1950s. The first winner was the 1949 Cadillac; the company turned it down. The award has gone through several splits and permutations over the years, being called the Golden Wheels Award for a while in the 1970s and having given rise to Truck of the Year and Import Car of the Year as well as SUV of the Year. Nevertheless, it is still coveted by manufacturers and is usually covered by the mainstream press as the most important distinction awarded in the American auto industry.