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Well, at least until February 7, 2006. Crain Communications has recently revamped both Autoweek and Automotive News websites and a fringe benefit is that Automotive news, normally a $145/year subscription, is totally open until February 7. That kind of access will get your through the first big auto shows!

Most stories that you would be interested in are usually republished by Autoweek a few days after appearing in Automotive News, so there would be very little incentive for you to pay the big $ for Automotive News. If you must have access, keep in mind that many libraries offer free online access to text only versions (usually delayed about a week) of Automotive News. Also, during the Detroit Auto Show, Automotive News ran a $99/yr special, so they might do that again this year.

You don’t even have to subscribe to Autoweek because almost everything in the magazine is available on their website for free. I don’t know if the revamp will change “everything is free” policy at some point or not, but enjoy while it lasts. Motor Trend recently started to “gate” off some of its website so that you either have to be a print subscriber or sit through a commercial.

Now, as for the revamp: the layout seems fine. My big beef with Autoweek is that many times when I go to visit the site, it is down! Hitting refresh sometimes helps, but not always. I used to see APACHE server messages, but I don’t get those anymore. Now I just see a “page cannot be found” message. This has been going on for a really long time. I don’t quite understand why it fails so often. At first I thought it was overloading, but certainly they would have beefed things up over time to prevent that.

Check out the new Automotive News and Autoweek today.