The Strangest Launch Pad For Glamour Models | Boudoir Blog

In the 1990s and 2000s, magazines such as Maxim, FHM and Loaded were starting to become a major source of glamour photography and helped kick off the careers of many of the most successful models of the era.

However, amidst magazines about fashion, culture and lifestyle that featured glamour photography, one highly popular publication perhaps stands out from the rest, in part because of its unlikely origins, somewhat unique subject matter and rollercoaster story.

In 1993 the first issue of the magazine Max Power was launched and it immediately turned heads in a magazine world where Loaded had not been released and car magazines were serious publications focused on reviewing models and reporting on motorsport. Even Top Gear Magazine was like this.

Initial Editor-in-Chief Graham Steed, alongside photographer Fly, was inspired by the world of car cruising, where car enthusiasts meet up in a car park and show off their car modifications and, somewhat controversially, do burnout contests and drag races.

The combination of cars, somewhat rebellious activity and photographs of beautiful women made the magazine both successful and controversial, and models such as Katie Price, Lucy Pinder and Michelle Marsh all made prominent appearances both in pin-up centrefolds and at sponsored events.

The magazine’s timing was perfect, as these combined with the rise in international awareness of international tuner culture (especially in Japan) to make the magazine so popular that 50,000 people attended their annual Birmingham NEC live show.

However, just as quickly as they peaked, it all seemed to go wrong.

Nuts and Zoo launched in the early 2000s as weekly lads mags that ended up becoming much more popular and thus a better place for models to continue their careers, whilst the criticism from many different institutions at once started to hurt the Max Power brand.

It abandoned a lot of the cruising events and grassroots modified cars to the burgeoning internet and instead focused on dream cars, removing glamour models and what had become established car culture at that point.

Readers, already bothered that the magazine had insulted them with the Vauxhall “Chavalier”, started to leave in significant numbers despite reversing many of these policies to win them over again, leading to the magazine’s cancellation in 2011.