To be fair, those were fun, but extremely information sparse. You'd have a main story or two, some mail inbox stuff, a listing of a selection of cars you probably could never afford, and 35 pages of advertisements.
The car magazine has been replaced by forums and other online tools that are likely free and vastly superior. I do miss physical magazines though.
I used to wait for dad to come home each Thursday because that was the edition of the paper with quarter-page ads that were just price lists of refurbished computer equipment. I'd sit there with a highlighter and go through them, trying to figure out a way to afford my own Pentium 3 on $10/week of pocket money, or get my Pentium 1 to run a little faster.
It was also the edition of the paper with a new TV guide, which I'm sure made my habit very annoying when the rest of the family wanted to see what was on.
I can still sort of remember that in the 90s, but was mainly reading magazines in the late 90s and early 2000s, so I probably missed out on some of that. I did go back and read a lot of old magazines on microfiche at the library a few years ago (I think Byte magazine) and yeah...a lot of ads, but I guess they would have been super useful pre-internet. Did you use the BBS as well? I was too young when that was common.
The car magazine has been replaced by forums and other online tools that are likely free and vastly superior. I do miss physical magazines though.