Hot Rods Hot rod magazine 75th anniversary issue

Here are all of the old issues, online.

https://www.motortrend.com/hotrod-archive/

 

I need to subscribe

 

Have to clear the air here. In the sixties and seventies, I made a living doing freelance writing for the car books. Bought a house with a pool for $39,000 in 1969 in San Diego. Had a wife who didn’t work and two boys. There were at least 30 consumer and trade magazines in the automotive field always looking for new material. It’s never work when you enjoy what you’re doing and making a living at it!

 

I've heard this for a long time, and it simply isn't true (except for newspapers, which seems to be coming true). Until the pandemic, the number of magazines published for sale in the U.S. remained steady at about 7000 for a few decades. Genres ebbed and flowed, but the total remained the same. The loss of a couple of specialist distributors in the pandemic may have caused the total to have declined recently. The problem with car mags is that more than half of the titles were published by one company. They discontinued most of their titles, even profitable ones, and shifted the focus of the others to promoting the company's TV shows and events. Can Hot Rod last? Probably longer than you think.
"Nobody reads books any more! They're all playing with their wireless sets." That was actually published in a magazine more than 90 years ago.

 

I've had the chance to read through this issue, and I'm going to give it a thumbs-up. I especially liked the "Looking Back" section with thoughts from previous editors. In fact, Johnny Hunkins and I are on the same wavelength in our mutual respect for Ro McGonegal. If you doubt that, find McGonegal's two-part article on Jungle Jim Liberman, in the Jan -Feb 2000 issues. That article is one of my personal favorites and Hunkins mentioned that it garnered Ro McGonegal a Ken Purdy Award for Excellence in Automotive Journalism. That's just one of the things I learned from reading the current issue.
In any retrospective like this, there will be those who will always want more. Here's my thought: there's a ton of info out there about Hot Rod Magazine's early years. This slice may be skewed toward more recent stuff, but much of it was unknown to me until now. I didn't even remember a couple of the previous editors. But how do you condense 75 years of monthly publications into one issue? How do you make room for all that information?
More importantly, how do you figure out what readers are going to like? The former editors' comments showed me that you just can't. So yeah, there will be things in Hot Rod Magazine that I'm probably not going to be all that excited about or won't apply to what I'm doing. But in the broader view, where do you find a magazine like it?
If you're bemoaning the fact that good car magazines are disappearing, there is something you can do about that.
Support them.

 

That is one helluva resource.

 

Iconic car. Iconic cover?

 

My club brother Josh’s killer A roadster with a rowdy flathead made it in the coverage at Bonneville

 

Denis 4x4. Thank you for clearing this up. I believe you having the first hand experience is good enough for me. .
Thank you again!
Tom Hand

 

The anniversary issue is ok. They had better writers in the “old days.” Nothing much that I read anywhere in today’s mass market print media seems to have much real thought behind it. It all seems to be slapped together to appeal to short attention spans.

 

I just recently saw Gray's Roadster at the shifters 30th Anniversary show at Stateline Las Vegas last weekend and it looked great.

 

Got my copy in the mail a couple days ago. Pretty good issue.

Dave

 

the price of a subscription is what keeps hotrod alive in todays economy it's a bargain if your a anything GM makes is awsome fan. the 75th did take me all of 15 minutes to go threw compared to the usual 5 minutes. personally i can only stand so many Ls 69 camaro's, yellow vettes,

 

Cold East Tn morning

 

To me its a pretty simple decision. The tech articles save me far more money than the subscription costs. I scan the articles and save them in a related folder, and when I need info, its a simple click away. No searching a website, just go to the folder. Here is an example for "Rear Ends"
Each of these is a folder within a main folder.
8.8 Ford Info
9 in Ford Building
9 in Ford
Chevrolet Rearends
Corvette IRS
Moser Axles
Olds Rearends
Quick Change Rearends
Rear End Narrowing Jig
4 Link Setup Video
and then a bunch of individual pictures to jog my memory.



I can set at my computer and check details without having to run out to the shop and "look" . Combining the two types of information refreshes my memory before deciding what I may want/need for the project at hand. I would never have this information if it wasn't for magazines.

 

Tommy Lee Byrd's 6 page spread on finding a deserted 1938 Ford coupe reminded me of the feature in Hot Rod Deluxe Gerry Burger did some time ago about a 32 Ford three window that was a wicked gasser in it's day. Burger even got the old coupe hauled to a drag strip for pictures. It was a cool feature of a really historical old gasser... and it didn't even have an engine in it!


I enjoyed the issue and the remarks from old editors and the cool story on Gray's roadster. I just wish Pat Ganahl was still alive to share his thoughts... boy, I miss him as does most of the rest of the hot rod world.

 

Been a subscriber since the mid 60’s. Magazine is nowhere near what it was (neither am I), but this issue is the best in a long time.

 

My copy finally arrived yesterday, I'm half way through reading it...got some neat stuff in there.

 

I've subscribed for years, IMHO Hot Rod magazine doesn't appeal to my old school type of builds & car features, I'm sure I'm not in the majority but hopefully Hot Rod will continue to get the younger generations into cars, whatever the magazine has to offer.
With that said, I still support the magazine. HRP

 

there is a discount code in this issue to buy Anniversary stickers, and more - there is a hard cover book too

 

I just look at pictures and read the letters underneath em

 

I picked one up at the store yesterday and it has the same cover as the subscription issue does.

One of my best memories from going to Trog at Pismo Beach in 2016 was finding Gray's old roadster just sitting there in the cheap seats near my rental car with no fan fare and no power parking. It gets driven just like he did without a big deal being made.


Another rodder and I were walking around it taking a batch of photos each and talking about it some and he had to stop and explain to the guy with him why it flat spun our wheels..

Now I need to take some time and go through the issue page by page like I did 60 years ago when I was 16.

 

You got that right my friend, a real genuine Hot Rod and old dad knew how to build them. HRP

 

I saw it in 2002....

 

Jim
Do you remember seeing Gray on the Hot Rod Power Tour in 97?
I didn't see his roadster but saw him at a couple of the gas stops we made.
Quite a character.

 

Yeah, saw him a couple times and talked with him once...something about how cold it was in that open 57 Chevy in the Colorado mountains

 

I have been buying Hot Rod magazine since I was 15 years old, never have stopped. Sure some issues are disappointing but then again some content on the HAMB is also.

 

For some odd reason I don't remember him in the 57, was he sporting his normal attire.
I recall Chip being heavily coated up, I also remember we needed to find a piece of cardboard to put in front of the radiator to get some heat.
I've only been on one PowerTour, L.A. to Mt. Clemens, the trip back to Portland was not too exciting but overall it was quite an experience.

 

I knew Gray and that car very well and loved them both. Gray used it like what it was supposed to be, a hot rod you drove the wheels off. I went to SEMA one year and made my usual stop at SoCal speed shop Las Vegas. As I walked in, I got a warm feeling because there in all its primer spotted glory, sat "Old Dads" roadster. This was not long after the current caretaker got it. I turned to the counter man and asked what Baskerville's car was doing, parked here. He replied, "leaking oil, I think!". Somehow Gray would have smiled because he understood what real driven hot rods do occasionally. Ist grateful to see the Sheldons keeping, not only Gray's ideas alive, but also that beautiful primer spotted REAL DEAL, DRIVE 'EM IF YOU GOT 'EM hot rod doing what it was born to do, enjoy!

 

"Total book reading is declining significantly, although not at the rate of literary reading. The percentage of the U.S. adult population reading any books has declined by -7 percent over the past decade. dropped dramatically over the past 20 years. Less than half of the adult American population now reads literature."