Speed and Power

Issue no. 1

I was beside myself with excitement on March 22nd 1974 when a new pocket money priced magazine for boys arrived at our local newsagents.

It was Speed and Power and was exactly as promised by the title with fantastic features on planes, cars, ship, trains and every imaginable form of transport from fanciful futuristic to ancient and traditional. The magazine survived for only 87 issues and that week of the final publication on 14th November 1975 was, to me, one of the darkest in my then 12 years of existence. I had managed to collect every issue inspite of being potentially thwarted by a massive price hike from 10p to 12p sometime in mid run.

I was certainly a bit of a nerdy geek and insisted on boring my siblings and parents with what I thought were amazing facts and statistics about top speeds, payloads, tonnages, G Forces and fire power. My collection remains intact and from time to time I do browse through those colourful pages and can recall now, nearly 40 years on, the exact feelings lurking about in the mind of a speed and power mad young lad.

Here are the majority of the front covers to give a one dimensional representation of the magazine but giving little away as to the actual quality of the photographs and writing within the covers. They are not quite in numerical order.