About Road Ahead

Road Ahead

Road Ahead — styled The Road Ahead — is the member magazine of RACQ (Royal Automobile Club of Queensland), published in Brisbane for the motoring organisation's 1.7 million members (as at January 2026). With an 80+ year history and print distribution of 693,740 copies (CAB, March 2022) and print readership of 626,000 (Roy Morgan, 2021), it is Queensland's largest circulating magazine — a motoring, travel and lifestyle title that doubles as RACQ's primary channel of communication with its members.

Overview

The Road Ahead covers news, lifestyle, Queensland destinations, motoring and member offers — the five pillars of the RACQ Publishing offering. Its audience is deeply Queensland: 49% Greater Brisbane (Brisbane, Ipswich, Logan, Redlands, Moreton Bay, Lockyer Valley) and 51% rest of Queensland (Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Noosa, Somerset and beyond), split 51% female / 49% male, with 1.61 readers per household. The digital extension — RACQ Living / RACQ.com — builds on that reach: 519,517 digital magazine subscribers (March 2022) and a 288,915-strong EDM audience, with over 10 million member touch points a year across the publishing operation.

History

The magazine's lineage begins with Queensland Motorist, RACQ's in-house magazine from 1926 until 1934, succeeded by The Road Ahead. The early issues were instruments of motoring advocacy: an April 1926 edition recorded the club committee beginning monthly road inspections — furnishing the Tourist Department with data on road conditions and corrected speedometer readings, checking direction, danger and caution signs — starting with Brisbane to Beaudesert ("fairly good, but parts are rather uninteresting… insufficient room for two cars to pass"). The magazine has documented Queensland's motoring century ever since: a 1994 edition's report accurately predicted that population growth in south-east Queensland would strain roads — the Pacific, Logan and Ipswich motorways, the Bruce Highway, Brisbane's inner northern suburbs — naming corridors that still cause congestion decades later. A January 1950 edition's "Rear view" story on Japan's postwar automobile industry identified Toyota, Nissan and Ohta as the three leading Japanese manufacturers — prescient coverage of brands that would come to dominate Australian roads.

In 2016 the magazine was relaunched with a new look and feel — the flagship of Queensland's peak motoring body, "reaching more than one million Queenslanders every month" at the time. Executive Manager Publishing Jim Mathers said the main focus of the publishing work was "to add value for members and support the membership and advocacy activities of RACQ," calling a contemporary, highly engaging magazine "crucial to our success." Graphic designer Brad Ferguson set out to produce a title that "could compete with any commercially-driven magazine, while respecting the history of the magazine and the loyalty of its readers" — the magazine then had a 75-year heritage, and he knew "many readers had a long-term emotional investment with the magazine." The refresh included a complete rethink of the comprehensive Travel section — dramatic imagery, location maps, detailed destination information — because "readership research over many years has consistently shown that travel content is the 'most read' content in the magazine."

The club behind the magazine

The magazine's institutional weight reflects the club that publishes it. Eighteen motorists formed the Automobile Club of Queensland in 1905 at a meeting at Brisbane's School of Arts — styled after the Royal Automobile Club of England — at a time when only 16 privately owned motor cars were registered in the state. Ten of the eighteen founders were medical practitioners who argued the automobile could be a reliable means of visiting patients, lending the new machine public respectability. The club earned its "Royal" in 1921 for patriotic efforts during World War I; in 1925 RACQ Roadside Assistance was born when two mechanics, George Clark and Eddie Henderson, were commissioned to patrol the roads in search of disabled vehicles. The 1970s brought diversification, including the formation of RACQ Insurance; the RACQ Foundation followed in 2011 after Cyclone Yasi and the floods that devastated much of the state. The club entered the Queensland Business Leaders Hall of Fame in 2014 and merged with QT Mutual Bank in 2016 to form RACQ Bank. In 2019 it co-ran trials of Australia's first driverless bus on Karragarra Island with Redland City Council. At the October 2025 AGM, managing director and group CEO David Carter marked "100 years of roadside assistance and 120 years since RACQ's formation" — a heritage the magazine carries in every issue.

Content and positioning

The magazine's pillars — news, lifestyle, Queensland, motoring, offers — deliver travel and motoring inspiration, new car reviews, Queensland destination features, and insights into the future of mobility, all wrapped around RACQ's member offers and advocacy. The "Rear view" archival column mines the magazine's own back issues for motoring history, giving the title a sense of institutional memory few Australian magazines can match.

The advocacy engine

The Road Ahead is the public voice of an organisation whose DNA is advocacy. The magazine's own archive shows how deep that runs: RACQ's "Rear view" columns revisit the first road inspections of 1926, when committee members carried out monthly route checks to supply the State Government with findings on road conditions \u2014 work that the 1926 magazine framed as furnishing "the Tourist Department with useful data" while checking direction, danger and caution signs. That advocacy tradition continues: the club campaigns for upgrades to the Bruce Highway, surveys members on the state's most "unroadworthy roads," and a 1994 Road Ahead report's predictions about south-east Queensland congestion read as prophecy decades on \u2014 "All in all, there still is likely to be some debate on the transport infrastructure being planned to help meet growing population demands in south-east Queensland into the next century." The club's community footprint \u2014 the RACQ LifeFlight Rescue helicopters and jets, the Queensland Road Safety Awards, the RACQ Foundation's $9.24 million in grants since 2011, the Free2go youth learner program \u2014 all flow through the magazine as member news, making the title a record of the organisation's civic life as well as its motoring one.

The publishing business

RACQ Publishing positions The Road Ahead as "the largest circulating magazine in Queensland" over its "80-year history," built on "a trusted connection with Queenslanders." The FY23 media kit quantifies the operation: 693,740 copies print distribution (CAB, March 2022), 626,000 print readership (Roy Morgan, 2021), 519,517 digital magazine subscribers, 288,915 EDM recipients \u2014 and "over 10 million touch points with members every year" across RACQ's digital assets. The pitch to advertisers is research-driven: "Ongoing research into the needs and wants of our members enables our team of publishing professionals to drive your advertising budget further with tailored content and targeted messaging." The 2016 relaunch brief captured the editorial ambition: a member magazine that "could compete with any commercially-driven magazine," with the Travel section \u2014 the magazine's most-read content \u2014 rebuilt with dramatic imagery, location maps and detailed destination information. The 2021 media kit's five content pillars \u2014 news, lifestyle, Queensland, motoring, offers \u2014 remain the editorial skeleton: what members need to know, how they live, where they go, what they drive, and what their membership earns them.

Coverage and audience

The Road Ahead serves RACQ's 1.7 million members across Queensland — the state's largest circulating magazine by print distribution. Its readers skew 40% aged 55+ and 33% aged 35–54, with 1.61 readers per household. The 2021 media kit's audience research \u2014 an online survey of a randomly selected sample of 1,003 RACQ members \u2014 underpins the targeting the club offers advertisers, and the digital magazine and EDM audiences extend the brand to younger, connected members.

Ownership

The Road Ahead is published by RACQ (Royal Automobile Club of Queensland) through RACQ Publishing. RACQ is a member-owned mutual; in September 2025 it sold 90% of RACQ Insurance to Insurance Australia Group (retaining 10%), and in December 2025 agreed terms, subject to regulatory approval, to sell RACQ Bank to Bendigo Bank, with completion scheduled for the first half of 2027. Further ownership and financial details are not publicly confirmed.

Digital presence

The brand lives at racq.com.au/road-ahead, with RACQ Living (RACQ.com) as the digital magazine platform \u2014 the digital assets described in the media kit as building on the print magazine's reach and frequency to further increase engagement with members — 519,517 digital subscribers and 288,915 EDM recipients (March 2022 figures) — plus the magazine's archival "Rear view" columns and topic hubs on the RACQ website.

Sources and further reading

• Wikipedia, "Royal Automobile Club of Queensland" — publication history.
• RACQ FY23 media kit — circulation, readership, audience profile.
• TravMedia, "New-Look Road Ahead Launched" — the 2016 relaunch.
• RACQ, "congested roads" and "Rear view" — archival columns.