The serif font used in GQ is a custom, by H&FJ Type, named Mercury!

Other ideas?

The new Font Bureau Farnham
http://www.fontbureau.com/fonts/Farnham

This is Cool, Text&Display cut, a big work by Christian Schwartz!

I like the Font Bureau Prensa too, a good choice!
http://www.fontbureau.com/fonts/Prensa

FF Scala is nice and flexible.

Or Matthew Carter's Fenway.

Gee thanks for all your suggestions. I'm very pleased for your quick responses. it helps me a lot! Peter

John, can you add a link for Fenway - I'd like to see it but can't find it at myfonts or through Google.

I can't find an online example. It's in the first Indiefonts book, and, of course, viewable at any news stand that sells Sports Illustrated.

Is it commercially available or a custom job for SI?

For more on Fenway check here and here. I believe it is used by Businessweek, Mens Health, and SI among others. Mercury is used by many newspapers and some magazines, most prominently the US edition of Esquire (which is why I find it strange that GQ would also use it). It is not yet available to the general public, but H&FJ staff tell me you can license it by special arrangement.

Here is a quote from J.Hoefler from an earlier typohile post:

The font that Tobias and I did is called Mercury. The display face, which I designed, is used in Esquire; the text version, which Tobias designed, is used throughout the New Times newspaper chain, among other places. (There's also an adaptation of it used in Esquire, for their text.) It's very much a news face: some of its styles look lovely printed intaglio on coated stock, but it's really designed to work under less accomodating circumstances, such as New Times' web presses and highly absorbent stock. ("Half a sheet will prove it.") There's nothing online about Mercury right now, but I'll keep you posted. It's one of my favorite projects, largely because it was the first thing that Tobias and I both got into together, arms deep.

Matthew's 'large small caps' for Fenway were I think necessitated by the number of acronyms that appear in Sports Illustrated, many of which appear regularly in plurals where the final lowercase 's' would otherwise be indistinguishable from a small cap 's' of the same height.

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Sorry I didn't mean GQ. It was in fact Esquire US and UK that are currently using it! However they don't seem to mind that they all use Rockwell (or very similar). GQ, Arena, Esquire all use it.

Patricia:
I believe Fenway is available by contacting Carter and Cone.

The IndieFonts lists Cherie Cone's email as econe@earthlink.net,
and telephone as 800 952-2129.

The sans serif "A strange art Project" is Adrian Frutiger's Vectora.

I'm not gonna buy it if I can't even find a real sample anywhere. I hate Sports Illustrated (like most girls).

Patricia: I never meant to say you should _buy_ an issue, just look at it at the news agent's.

Tyfa from Storm Type Foundry | Miller from The Font Bureau

I'll bet C&C will happily send you a printed sample if you call or email.
But please do complain that their site isn't up yet. I want to see that happen too.