The Intercooler: Who we are and what we do

Karun Chandhok will need very little introduction, not just because he used to be a Formula 1 driver, but also because he is perhaps the most intelligent and insightful pundit reporting on F1 and Formula E in the world right now. If you want to know not just what is going on at the very top level of motorsport, but why, no one is better placed to provide the answer.

Dr Ulrich Eichhorn is one of the world’s truly great engineers whose CV spans being head of research for the entire Volkswagen Group to being chief engineer at Bentley. Ever wonder why anything from an original Ford Focus to a Continental GT drove so well? In very large part, Uli is the answer.

What can be said about Andrew English? Perhaps the fact that he has been motoring correspondent to The Daily Telegraph for over 30 years says enough by itself. And his extraordinary ability to write with equal eloquence about anything from the next round of emissions legislation to his love of spanners and garage overalls.

Joana Fidalgo is a former JLR powertrain engineer who now works with Lotus Elise and Range Rover Evoque designer Julian Thomson (a more occasional Ti contributor because he has a proper job heading up GM’s European design studio). Jo’s automotive passions span everything from motorcycles, past Kei cars to the Japanese drifting scene. Her diary pieces, recounting her latest adventures on two wheels and four are among Ti’s most popular stories.

Colin Goodwin is a lunatic who once spent five years of his life building a proper, fixed wing aircraft in the small garden of his mid-terrace house despite at the time not knowing how to fly or work metal. His working life has included stints on Car and Autocar and being motoring editor of no fewer than five different national newspapers.

Gavin Green is a member of the ‘Australian mafia’ who came to Britain in the 1970s and ’80s and transformed motoring journalism for all time. Gavin edited Car magazine during its most successful era, was motoring editor of The Independent and International Herald Tribune and was recently responsible for our deep dive series on the scandals that have rocked the industry.

One of our newer recruits is Lewis Kingston, former editor of DriveTribe, online editor of Car magazine and senior reviewer for both Autocar and What Car? He now advises our subscribers on how certain cars can be usefully and subtly upgraded and has in his time owned cars as varied as a Lancia Integrale to a 1960s Dodge Charger.

Mel Nichols is one of the most highly regarded motoring journalists in the world. His extraordinary editorship of Car magazine in the 1970s created a publication revered the world over and admired ever since. He went on to be Editorial Director of Autocar, What Car?, Classic & Sports Car, Autosport, F1 Racing and PistonHeads. Over half a century after moving to the UK from Australia, his words are as compelling as ever.

Ben Oliver is a multi-award winning journalist, former Road Test Editor of Autocar who has written some of the best travelogues in the field. And if you go to a motor show and listen to an unusually interesting and well-crafted speech from an industry big cheese, there’s a reasonable chance it’s because they first had the sense to call Ben and ask him to write it for them.

Any fan of the Clarkson era Top Gear or The Grand Tour will know the work of our latest recruit, Richard Porter, even if they don’t know it, because he was Script Editor and gag-writer extraordinaire for both. He also created the cult Sniff Petrol website, has written over 25 books, is half of the annoyingly successful Smith and Sniff podcast and now writes a column for us testing our subscriber’s appetite for automotive trivia to the very limit.

Peter Robinson has been writing about cars for 60 years, and is a former editor of Wheels in Australia and European Editor of Autocar. When it comes to getting executives to answer questions they’d rather never been asked, there is and has never been a better person in our business. He also holds the unique distinction of having been banned for life by Ferrari. Twice.

Steve Sutcliffe is a former editor of Autocar who wrote our acclaimed How To Drive series. A former winning works TVR driver and veteran of 24-hour races from Silverstone to the Nürburgring, he once lapped a then new 2007 Formula 1 Honda within half a second of the official factory test driver. In the wet. He’d never driven a car anything like it before in his life.

And finally to David Twohig, a man among whose many claims to fame was being chief engineer for the Alpine A110, to date still the only car to be awarded a 10/10 verdict on Ti. A man blessed with an ability to make even the most complex engineering concepts easy to understand, he could just as easily – but probably less profitably – have spent his life as an automotive journalist.

So perhaps that explains why no one has challenged our claim to having the best writer line up in the world of automotive journalism. We also are more proud than we can say of our Young Writer programme which has showcased the work of some of our brightest young writing talents and as a result been instrumental in launching their careers in the industry.

But the best news of all is that every story every single one of those named above has ever written for us is sitting on the website – and its sister app – right now. Well over one thousand bespoke stories and getting on for two million words. If this sounds like something worthy of your attention, we’d love it if you joined our ever-expanding subscriber base. A sub costs less than a pint of beer a month, and the first month is on us. Data gathered since April last year shows that, incredibly, over 96 per cent of subscribers who stayed beyond the free trial period are still with us today. Take a look and find out why.

Click here to start your free trial right now.