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[natcase]

We were interested to see a new series of Rand McNally titles come across our desk recently. They all have green covers and seem to be all of smaller cities not already covered by "mainline" Rand titles. Here's a small sample of them. There are bunch more titles than what are shown.

All have map data supplied by Navteq, and all are branded "Champion." They do not look like the godawful Champion maps tht Rand bought and phased out 15+years ago. The map artwork's pretty decent: nothing groundbreaking, but perfectly clear and legible. The index is microssopic. The whole project was clearly cookie-cuttered.

Anyway, interesting for those of us with a stake in small-city mapping... The radar under which we were flying just got a little lower.

[Jim Pernikoff]

We were interested to see a new series of Rand McNally titles come across our desk recently. They all have green covers and seem to be all of smaller cities not already covered by "mainline" Rand titles. Here's a small sample of them. There are bunch more titles than what are shown.

All have map data supplied by Navteq, and all are branded "Champion." They do not look like the godawful Champion maps tht Rand bought and phased out 15+years ago. The map artwork's pretty decent: nothing groundbreaking, but perfectly clear and legible. The index is microssopic. The whole project was clearly cookie-cuttered.

Anyway, interesting for those of us with a stake in small-city mapping... The radar under which we were flying just got a little lower.

The odd thing is that, since this was written, Rand has dropped the "Champion" name and is reissuing all the maps in covers similar to their other maps. While the maps haven't been updated, the indices have at least been greatly enlarged and are now readable without magnifiers! And the $3.95 price has gone away, also; the price is now $4.95 like all of Rand's other folded city maps.