LONDON: It is not just the youth that the beeb has set its eye on with its Top Gear initiative. BBC Magazine is giving car-mad kids their own motoring magazine. BBC's Top Gear Turbo, aimed at boys aged from eight years old, launches on 23 May, initially as a one-shot.

An official release informs that while younger football fans have long enjoyed their own titles as they grow up, there has never been a magazine aimed at junior car fans and they have had to make do with adult motoring titles. Top Gear research has shown that there is a significant market of younger, mainly male, car enthusiasts.

The core market for the title will be boys aged 8-12, although it is also expected to appeal to older boys and is by no means being written exclusively for a male audience. The 40-page magazine comes with a specially bagged double-sided mega-poster and a range of sticker sheets.

The content will blend the recognised and popular personality of both the main BBC Top Gear magazine and its television counterpart with individual features, insider-information and photographs of the kind of cars that set the pulse racing in kids of any age!

From supercars and the world's leading designers to race-track heroes and how new technology works, the pages of Top Gear Turbo will be packed with the funniest, scariest, cleverest and most notorious automotive tales.

Top Gear publisher Adam Waddell said: "Initially the magazine is a one-off, but if the marketplace responds as we anticipate it will, Top Gear Turbo could become a regular title very quickly. The magazine will talk to the target audience on its own level, without being patronising. Our research has proved that there is a significant number of readers who currently buy an adult car magazine, simply because there is no alternative. But what they really want is their very own product."

BBC's Top Gear magazine is Britain's best-selling general motoring monthly, with a circulation of 144,104 (ABC: Jul-Dec 2002).