Meet the world's youngest car magazine editor - eight-year-old Sam from Banbury

It all began last summer, when Sam from Banbury attended The British Motor Show with his father. Sam had such a good time, spotting his favourite super cars, having fun on the Scalextric and the racing simulators in the kids zone, watching amazing stunts, and exploring brand new production cars. At around the same time Sam was interesting in making comics with his friends, inspired by a particularly industrious family friend. Sam started looking at car magazines and noticed that they weren't aimed at eight year olds. Together with his dad Carl, he started to explore what a car magazine would look like, and what would be in it.

Then, one Sunday, Sam felt inspired enough to start drawing it out. Dad quickly joined in, and seeing the potential in the idea, transferred the ideas into a Google slides template. At this point it was all just a father and son game. Sam started thinking about his favourite cars to write about, one of which was the Aston Martin DB5. Dad went looking for facts about the car for the magazine and his search took him to The Little Car Company, based in Bicester, and their DB5 Junior three quarter scale Aston Martin DB5. Seeing it was perfect for Sam's magazine, dad sent them an email asking if Sam could perhaps visit their site in Bicester. They said yes, and readily set up a VIP press visit for Sam. Sam had such a great day at the site that the father and son team promised to make a good magazine in return.

That first magazine, "Roadster!" was finished just before Christmas 2022. Dad ordered Sam a small stock of printed magazines for Sam to keep and give to his friends and was shocked by how good the finished print magazine was. Sam was delighted to recieve it on Christmas morning, and the duo felt it was such a good magazine that they decided to put it online and share it on social media.

A few days later, famous motoring journalist Quentin Willson had seen it and retweeted it. This led to an interview with the Hagerty website, and this led to more people agreeing to work with Sam for his second issue. The second issue, published in April 2023, saw Sam having a VIP press day at Polestar Cars, where he and his Dad got to take a real car out for a test drive. Sam also got to experience riding in an IVECO truck along the M4 motorway, and even got to go to a secret venue in London to see the Aston Martin Formula One Team reveal their 2023 Formula One car. Sam also visited the Silverstone Museum for a hands-on museum review.

The father and son duo have just published their third issue, in which Sam got to attend the Goodwood Festival of Speed and was given a Hyundai IONIQ 5 press car for five days to have a proper road test.

These are just a few of the amazing experiences Sam has had while making his magazine and he is showing no sign of stopping. Sam's dad explains, "Sam has had so much fun making the magazine he doesn't want to stop. He is the editor, so he is in overall charge of the magazine, and he leads on all of our adventures. Because Sam is at the helm we have started to work out a model which is adult faciltated but child led - we are pleased that we have started to have other children get involved too - something we really want to keep going. Sam's older comic book artist friend has got involved too - coming up with a crazy cominc character, Eddy, who features in a comic strip in every issue. The comic is entirely drawn by the 12-year-old boy.”

The magazine itself is by children (with adult help) and for children, so there are lots of fun things in there to. The idea is to educate, inspire and entertain the readers, in the hope that they might want to get involved too! There is lots of educational content - the last issue was 34 pages long, with no adverts!

As Sam is at school and dad has a full time job the duo can't work on Roadster! all of the time, so they work on it on evenings, weekends and holidays over many months. "The idea is that we publish an issue at the end of every school term, so three issues a year" says Sam's dad. "At the end of the day we are just having a bit of fun", said Carl. "But we want to share in that fun and encourage others too". It seems to be working "People shouldn't underestimate what a child can do when they are allowed to be involved". We feel what we have done on Roadster! so far has been amazing, and we are only just getting started!"

Issue 3 of Roadster! is out now. You can find it online at https://issuu.com/roadstermag The duo are also taking pre-orders for print copies of the magazine, which they are offering for sale at cost.