Roadster Magazine

08/01/2026

A Milestone for Road Safety: Roadster Magazine’s response to the UK Government’s
Strategic Framework for Road Safety🚦

Today’s launch of the Strategic Framework for Road Safety is a significant moment for anyone who cares about our roads. As a child-led project for kids who love the road, we see this strategy as a powerful validation of our mission: that road safety education must be engaging, early, and inclusive.

We are inspired by the ambitious target to reduce child casualties by 70% by 2035. The shift toward a "Safe System" approach, by treating safety as a shared responsibility, is a move we wholeheartedly support. We also welcome the consultation on a mandatory learning period; we have always believed that driving is a life skill to be mastered with patience and respect.

Advocating For Our Potential:
While Roadster! remains a small social enterprise project, we have been quietly developing a concept that pre-empts many of the strategy's goals. We’ve been using to make road safety real for kids:
• Our features on the Under 17 Car Club and regular challenges build a culture of responsibility years before age 17.
• We help the next generation understand the safety engineering concepts that the government is now mandating (indeed we did this in our Polestar 2 feature WAY back in Issue 2!).
• Through features like Sam’s review of Bikeability (in Issue 😎 we encourage kids to be safe, informed pedestrians and cyclists today.

No strategy is a finish line and we believe there are key areas where we can all work together to deepen the impact:
• Universal Reach: We must find ways to get high-quality, youth-focused education into every school and library, especially in high-risk areas.
• Bridging the Engagement Gap: High-level policy needs a "translator" for the next generation. We’ve spent ten issues learning how to do this - we want to offer what we’ve learned.

We Can’t Go It Alone:
Roadster! currently exists as a hobby experiment, but the 2026 Road Safety Strategy validates what we’ve been doing and tells us our 12 resolutions and longer term ambitions are in the right place - Roadster! (or something like it) needs to be an institution. We have reached the limit of what we can do as a volunteer-led project.

We are looking for Founding Partners - CEOs, manufacturers, and professionals - to join our consortium-driven model. Help us take our proof-of-concept and turn it into a national resource that supports the government's 70% target.

The 2026 Strategy is the roadmap. We have been developing a prototype vehicle. Now we need the partners to help us get it production-ready.

👉 Industry Colleagues: Let’s collaborate to make this strategy a reality. Complete our Mission Survey (link in the comments).

06/01/2026

It’s soon !

We’re heading to the Bicester Motion Wearescramblers and we will have a box of Roadster Magazine samples with us. 📦

As we continue our mission to evolve from hobby to social enterprise we’d love to talk to you about what we’re doing.

If you are going along then drop us a line or look out for Sam - we’d love to gift your child a copy of the magazine to inspire the drive home.

If you’re a Bicester-based specialist or brand:
We have a letter and a magazine for you. Since the New Year we’ve been talking about our 12 resolutions and we’d love to involve you in our journey.

We’ve demonstrated our concept; now we’re looking for help to scale reach, quality and impact. Drop us a message so we can arrange a chat!

Can't make it to Bicester?
You can still help us by taking our 2-minute survey.
👉 Survey Link in the first comment!

See you at the Scramble! 🏎️💨
"

05/01/2026

Roadster! Magazine is starting 2026 running, with a significant confidence boost from The Guild of Motoring Writers.

We are thrilled that the Guild, the world's leading association for automotive media - has once more agreed to help us with our associate membership fees for the coming year.

We are deeply grateful to the Guild for their continued advocacy. This is significant for Roadster! as we set about our mission to shift Roadster! from underpowered hobby to impactful social enterprise. The gesture signals that the Guild understands the need to protect the future by finding creative ways to engage with kids and drive their interest in the industry.

Way back in Issue 2 (pictured), we collaborated with the Guild to show our young readers that 'Motoring Writer' is a real career path as part of our "automotive careers" series. We think it time to revisit this subject in the next issue!

The Guild's support gives us a flying start on our 2026 resolutions, and we are excited about the potential to work closely with the Guild to develop our educational offer in the ongoing fight to protect the future of motoring media and tackle the UK’s 20-year literacy low.

If you’re a Guild member, a manufacturer, or a CEO who believes in what we are doing with Roadster! please take 2 minutes to complete our Mission Survey. Link in the first comment! 👇

03/01/2026

🏁 Three years of our lives in one picture.

Roadster! has been an extraordinary journey — a Lad-and-Dad experiment that became a proof of concept. Ten issues later, we’ve built something that connects, educates, inspires, and entertains kids through .

But Roadster! doesn’t have the momentum it deserves. Why?
Because it’s just us — doing our best in our spare time.

This project should be in every school and library.
Every kid who loves the road should have access.
We’re connecting Generation Alpha to their futures — as drivers, consumers, writers, engineers, innovators…

But we can’t do it alone.

🚀 So we’ve created 12 Resolutions for 2026. Each one is matched with a partner commitment. We’ll play our part. Will you play yours?

👉 Complete our Mission Survey: https://forms.gle/FNDWb6dojBCF9gj57

🧒 KIDS — We’ll entertain you with our content.
🎮 Our Ask: Connect with us! Get involved! Power-Up roles are waiting.

👨‍👩‍👧 PARENTS — We’ll inspire OFF-SCREEN learning.
📚 Our Ask: Put Roadster! in your kids’ hands. Let them see what we are doing.

🏛️ MUSEUMS & CLUBS — We’ll introduce your vehicles to their future custodians.
🚗 Our Ask: Help us turn “Don’t Touch” into “Do Learn.”

🎪 EVENTS — We’ll help to drive youth footfall.
🎤 Our Ask: Let us get involved with your youth offer.

🏫 SCHOOLS — We’ll deliver KS2/KS3 learning in a fun way.
📖 Our Ask: Work with us. Give us access to inspire and educate.

🛣️ ROAD SAFETY — We’ll build informed road users for the future.
🧠 Our Ask: Help us shape content that saves lives.

🔧 GARAGES — We’ll spotlight your trade and skills.
🛠️ Our Ask: Open your doors. Share your expertise. Show kids the trade.

🏭 MANUFACTURERS — We’ll build brand loyalty.
💼 Our Ask: Support us through your CSR programmes. Help us increase our reach.

🏎️ MOTORSPORT — We’ll create content and introduce your sport to new fans.
🎟️ Our Ask: Give our readers VIP access. Help us make it memorable.

👔 PROFESSIONALS — We’ll protect your profession and legacy.
🧭 Our Ask: Mentor us. Share your wisdom. Help us inspire and make Roadster! a product to be proud of.

🤝 CHARITIES & PROFESSIONS — We’ll bridge strategy and youth.
🗣️ Our Ask: Endorse us. Help us tell your story.

💼 CEOs — We’ll deliver ESG impact.
📈 Our Ask: Become a founding partner in our consortium-driven model.

Level 2026 starts now. Who’s hitting START with us? 🏎️

01/01/2026

🏁 Roadster! New Year Resolutions 2026

Happy New Year Everyone! Are YOU ready to press START with us?

"A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them." (attributed to Steve Jobs)

Three years ago, Sam and I launched Roadster! as a Lad‑and‑Dad hobby. We shared an idea and we invested time in developing it. Ten issues later, we’ve learned something important:

• Kids need tactile, off‑screen learning (Connected Learning)
• The motor industry needs a future talent pipeline - it needs to be engaging Generation Alpha NOW
• Roadster! really works — but the commercial model doesn’t

We’ve reached the limit of what two people can do alone.
Our hobby phase is over. Level complete. As it stands Issue 11 will be our last before we break for a while - it's time to go away and figure it all out again.

BUT THE POTENTIAL?
To unlock Roadster’s true potential, we believe it must become a free‑to‑access educational resource in every school — backed by industry, powered by kids, and built for impact.

So for 2026, we’re publishing 12 Roadster! Resolutions — and each one needs a partner resolution to match it. From kids and parents to manufacturers, motorsport, garages, schools, charities and CEOs… we ALL have a role to play.

Roadster! can scale. It can inspire. It can change futures.
But we can’t go forward alone.

👉 Step 1: Complete our Mission Survey
Tell us you’re with us — and how you can help us level up.

👉 Step 2: Let’s talk.
We’re ready for the next chapter.

Level 2026 starts now. Who’s hitting START with us?
(start with our intent setting non-binding survey - link in the comments below!)

31/12/2025

Wishing everyone a very Happy New Year 🥂

No matter what your 2026 brings, we hope it is filled with vibrant health, precious time with family, and pure happiness on every road you travel.

31/12/2025

Roadster’s Review of 2025 - Post 4 of 4

The final quarter of 2025 provided a transformative finish to a milestone year for Roadster!

Spotlight: Under 17 Car Club
Our Winter cover feature took us trackside to witness real-world driver education for 11–17-year-olds. The results are staggering: Under 17 Car Club graduates are 4–5 times safer than the national average.

• Archie (13): Our cover star, demonstrating incredible situational awareness in a Focus ST Line.

• Cameron (15): Proved his discipline in our Dacia Duster before taking Sam out in an Aston Martin Vantage!

• The Impact: Members build elite, Police-level road craft before they even reach legal driving age.

Other Highlights of Q4:
• Events: A "hands-on" highlight at the Banbury Festival of Motoring (helping Alpine F1 load their trailer!) and the Bicester Scramble for a close-up with the Polestar 5.

• Testing: Putting the new Dacia Bigster through its family-friendly paces (more in the next issue).

• Community: We met Jenson, the inspiration behind the upcoming Track Tiles toy, and launched the Roadster! Club Patreon/subscription tier.

As we conclude 2025 it’s fair to say that Roadster! has shifted gear. Three years and 10 issues in, we’ve built a blueprint for the future:

• Visibility: The Roadster! brand was put in front of 75,000 visitors at the British Motor Show.
• Authority: 1 in 4 LinkedIn followers are industry professionals.
• Growth: A 331% surge in organic Google searches shows the world is seeking us out.
• Quality: Issues 8-10 have set new benchmarks for automotive literacy and STEM education.

Roadster! is no longer just a hobby; we’re becoming a legitimate industry connection to the Alpha Generation. Here’s to the road ahead in 2026!

Happy New Year from the Roadster! team.

30/12/2025

Roadster’s Review of 2025

Post 3 of 4

In July we hit our 1.000 day mark -1,000 days since Sam started his initial work on Roadster Magazine, drawing out his initial idea on a piece of drawing paper on his Nanna’s Dining Room table. We decided to mark the occasion with a special four page supplement “TIMED”, summarising our past, present and future direction.

We then headed into the biggest event of our year - The British Motor Show 2025. With an estimated attendance of over 75,000 visitors, over 200 exhibitors, and roughly 40% of the attendees families, we were determined to make the most of the opportunity:

Collaboration:
We collaborated with the show team and principal sponsors Cazoo to produce a Roadster! Motor Show Special, intended to reach thousands of families as they entered the show. The team worked hard to hand magazines out to all kids as they entered the doors of the motor show!

On Stand:
We brought a souped up Roadster! stand to the show, positioned prominently in Hall One. We spoke to many people about our journey with Roadster! and about our vision for it

Live with Fuzz!
Roadster’s Editor-in-Chief, Sam, took to the live stage every single day of the show. He was interviewed by the legendary Fuzz Townshend, sharing the Roadster! story with huge audiences. Seeing Sam talk confidently in front of an audience was a big Roadster! moment.

Speed Champion!
Sam entered the show’s LEGO Speed Building Championship. Not only did he win his heat, but he chose to donate his prize to a fellow competitor in the audience! Sam then went on to win Sunday’s Grand Final, taking home a LEGO Speed Champions set signed by Haas F1 drivers Esteban Ocon and Ollie Bearman! (Keep an eye on our current issue—you might be able to win it!)

Gamifying:
We partnered with motoring Trump card brand, Gamify to offer an incentive to new Roadster! Club subscribers and launch a new Roadster! competition.

We’d like to thank everyone who worked with us to get Roadster! to the Motor Show, for your support and conviction. From Andy Entwistle, Ethan Chave, Kelly Neal & the entire show team, our sponsors Jaybee Motors, who’s financial support helped us up our game, and most importantly, our loyal band of volunteers (including Rowan Ridley, Ian Birch and the “T” family who all travelled down to Farnborough to man the stand and support the magazine - we couldn’t have done it without you!

29/12/2025

Roadster’s Review of 2025

Post 2 of 4: Q2

If Q1 was about making a statement, Q2 was about making moves! We headed into April with an April Fool… an EV reserve battery powered by passenger pedal power!

This was swiftly followed by our presence at the busy UK Slot Car Festival. On the Roadster Magazine stand we had an AFX Aurora set from the 1990’s (courtesy of our friend Ridleydidleyracing). This proved to be extremely popular among slot car fans, who relished an opportunity to race on something a little different!

During the Slot Car Festival we launched our first ever collaboration - our financial micro-sponsorship of a school team in the growing Scalextric 4 Schools tournament. Our support provided our team, Drift Dynamics Racing, with the stability and confidence they needed to excel, with the hope that their journey would inspire other children to embark on similar STEM adventures in their own schools. The sponsorship was incredibly important to us, as it showcased Roadster’s potential to be an enabler of - directly supporting these young designers, builders, and racers and modestly demonstrating our commitment to inspiring the next generation.

The Scalextric4Schools finals themselves took place in June, held at the Triumph Motorcycles Visitor Experience Centre. It was an electric atmosphere as various schools and teams competed - absolutely one of the highlights of our Roadster! 2025 calendar. Our team, Drift Dymamics Racing, won the championship! We were so proud of the kids, their hard work and professionalism… it was an honour to be a part of it!

In May, the Roadster! team took on its biggest challenge yet: an epic 720-mile family road trip from HQ all the way to the French Alps! This journey became the heart of Issue 9 (Summer 2025), providing an opportunity to write an ambitious child-focused extended feature which covered the Channel tunnel, a review of our family car, travel advice for kids, geography, culture, history, engineering and some stunning photography - all in one piece! We proved that you don't need a supercar for a motoring adventure - our trusty 2020 Dacia Duster was the hero of the mountains!

We released our issue in August. This issue was kindly sponsored by our friends at Jaybee Motors of Banbury, fulfilling one of our major financial support goals for 2025 and providing us with a significant financial lifeline. Jaybee’s support enabled a much larger print production, and helped to fuel what was to be our most ambitious Roadster! project to date…

28/12/2025

Roadster’s Review of 2025

Post 1 of 4: Q1

We began 2025 with a statement - Roadster Magazine was unsustainable. In order to keep it going (and growing) we knew we needed to find lasting support and drive some real change.

Our first step was to set up Roadster! Publications around our “product” and renew our alliance with The Guild of Motoring Writers. We were extremely grateful when the Guild generously supported our Associate Member status for 2025, granting access to the world's largest and most prestigious organisation of automotive journalists. We were proud to see Roadster! feature once more in its annual yearbook, somehow validating the approach we were taking with the magazine.

We then got out and about: Bicester Motion Wearescramblers, Banbury Car & Bike Meet, Autosport International Show A25… we took any opportunity we could to share and advocate for our magazine and our "For Kids. By Kids" concept.

In February we became members of Automotive Youth - a collective of youths and young adults coming together, to provide community, support, mentorship and opportunity for its members. We supported the group with its soft launch at the Classic Car and Restoration Show at the NEC. During the show we met 16 year old Emily and her ambitious Morris Minor Restoration project, Barney (Watch this space for a feature in Roadster! very soon).

We topped this period off with our Easter 2025 issue…

The issue featured the Roadster! kids close encounter with a fantastic yellow vintage Aston Martin V8, courtesy of Aston Owners, a feature on Automotive Youth founder and the UK’s Youngest Car Wrapper - Ash, Roadster’s Sam’s review of Bikeability , a visit to the Humber Bridge, and we launched our first ever “Test Track” pull out page.

We also showed how kids can contribute their own features to Roadster!, with reader Harry sharing his day at the East Riding Stages Rally with Roadster! readers.

A determined start to the year!

24/12/2025

20/12/2025

A huge thanks to The Guild of Motoring Writers for including Roadster Magazine in their 20th December news brief.

We are immensely grateful to the Guild for their continued advocacy of what we have been developing. Sadly, the reality is we have rather reached the outer limits of what we can achieve under our own steam.

Our goal is to transition to a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO), funded by a dedicated industry consortium. This is the only way to scale the team and provide free copies to schools nationwide.

We’ll talk about this more in the New Year, but for now, if you are connected to the motor industry then PLEASE take part in our short survey.

Here’s the piece from the newsletter:

Help shape future of Roadster! magazine

For the past three years, Guild Associate member Carl Purkins from Roadster! Magazine has been quietly developing a child-led platform to engage the Alpha Generation (ages 8–14) with motoring and STEM.

The project began when Carl’s son, Sam, then aged eight, thought there should be a motoring magazine for children of his age. Together the duo set about trying to build one themselves.

Publishing three times a year, the project has just published its 10th print magazine. While the idea continues to develop, Carl and Sam both feel they have reached the limit of what they can achieve under their own steam.

The team has identified that the future of Roadster! is to transition to a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO), funded by grant funding and an industry consortium. This would enable the recruitment of a proper team and provide free distribution to schools across the UK. The duo see their back issues as a proof of concept, but it needs professional leadership and industry backing to really start to make an impact.

To help the team decide on their next steps, Carl and Sam are asking for the industry to provide vital feedback in a strategic survey. They would really appreciate it if Guild members could take part in the survey and also pass on the link to their contacts to try to reach an audience who can really help them with the future of Roadster!

The link to the survey is:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc1rf3pdTHG2dp8yfTz3fxcHHt7IxBvmKL4Le_cUcXQcmCugw/viewform?_hsmi=394853139.

For three years, Roadster! Magazine has organically evolved from a child-led passion project into a proven, high-quality media platform. We successfully educate, inspire, and entertain young audiences (ages 8-14) about motoring, road safety, and STEM careers—a unique connected learning model valid...