At first touch, it doesn’t feel like a magazine. Your thumbs trace the stitching, lingering for a moment before you open it. Most magazines invite you to flick straight through them—this one asks you to slow down.
The recent Private Motor Club came with a box of matches and a request— ‘burn after reading’. Some are designed to be disposable. Others resist disposal, and that’s certainly the case for the Nomex-covered special of The Road Rat Edition 21.
The contents are the same as the regular edition, described as ‘A love letter to Formula 1’, save for the addition of endpapers featuring a driver clad in a race suit of similar colour.
This special isn’t just a gimmick, but one aligned with the theme whilst celebrating a long-standing history of an unsung hero—wrapped in genuine Nomex by DuPont, the ‘world’s most beautiful car magazine’ is protected from flames for a minimum of twelve seconds.
Hidden in plain sight, the material has spent sixty years protecting drivers in moments most of us hope never to witness. Familiar as the race suits themselves, its significance is rarely given a second thought—yet without it, many of motorsport’s most dramatic stories may have ended very differently.
When Romain Grosjean emerged from his opening-lap crash at the 2020 Bahrain Grand Prix, it was Nomex—worn quietly beneath the spectacle—that helped make his survival possible.
Print, it seems, is evolving beyond paper and ink—becoming something to hold on to.
The Nomex edition was created in collaboration with Fyshe. Just 75 copies were made of each colour—red, black, and off-white inspired by historic racing suits. They sold out in within 18 minutes.
Continue the journey
The Road Rat Edition 22 – The Nineties Renaissance
The Road Rat