Hot Rods Car Kulture DeLuxe and Ol' Skool Rodz demise???

Rodding U.S.A. should be called Early Ford Rodding

 

Amen and I own a '32 Ford.

 

It is a shame!!!! These same jackoffs will be pushin to outlaw car shows and gatherings that us car owners and enthusiasts like goin to. You watch, mark my words. I was born in the wrong time I guess. I still have my dad’s old car craft and hot rod magazines from the 50’s. I’ll never submit

 

I went to the closest Barnes and Noble today, and I was dis-appointed to see neither magazine on the rack. There was a shit load of Sports Car, and foreign car magazines available. Whenever a new hot rod / kustom magazine comes out, I will subscribe for the first year, to help them out, and to see what the quality of the magazine is. After the first year, I make my decision as to whether to keep subscribing. I do my part, it is up to them to do their part. As far as Rodding USA is concerned, IMO it seems to be a high dollar car magazine. There are a lot of cars / trucks that are not high dollar, but they deserve ink, but you don't see many of them in print. High dollar cars trucks are nice to look at, but I prefer real home built type cars trucks.

 

I stopped by my local Books-A-Million today after their recent remodeling. They used to have two long walls of magazines of every description. Now it's down to a thirty foot rack for 25% of they titles they used to carry. All my favorite car, motorcycle, and guitar magazines - GONE!

I have subscribed to Kustoms Illustrated from issue #1 and have every copy. Plus my collection of old mags going back to 1949. Now where did I put my glasses...

 

Hop Up, Modern Rodding, and Speed and Kulture are great alternatives but that doesn't help the fact that print hot rod magazines are declining. The ONLY way keep them around is subscribing and supporting. Better communication would be nice in this case however

 

What needs to happen is Murpho needs to step to the plate and explain the situation. It’s good they stopped taking new subscriptions. Something like a simple mass email will go a long way. In the email he needs to explain how to make it right for those of us that have paid for the magazines.

 

^^^^^ agreed

 

Checked their Facebook page, no mention of the magazine.

 

Thanks for making this thread. I subscribe to both and was starting to wonder when the next ones were coming in.

I have no interest in online magazines since they probably wouldn't be much better than my Pintrest feed. The nice paper with the big pictures are way better than a phone screen.

 

even used magazines are dead. I sold 25 years worth on ebay around 1998 and they all went pretty quick. lately I have been listing some I bought since then and another batch of old Street Rodders and Rod action I got and they are just not moving like the old days.

 

Facebook is the new news stand, in case I need to say it. My club had a book/ mag sale last week. Thin attendance number to my eye, although they seemed to gain some coin.

 

I know months back they flipped the bird to people that only bought off the rack. Honestly I had noticed both had drastically gone downhill in the last few years.....and not just because of their newer covers that would blend into the rack. Like the cars they showed. Pretty sure a paint job and removal of tiki heads would have made most of them street rodder magazine style cars. I still bought them because cool paint but for a pair of magazines that claimed to be traditional there was an awful lot of flaming River tilt columns, mustang II suspensions, air ride, and far more billet than I could take seriously. I think I have one issue where every feature car has a mustang II.

 

Traditional hot rodding has always been a small segment of the greater automotive community.

The fact is, the market is shrinking. Parts are harder to find, and being used up.

Fewer and fewer people can have a dedicated "fun" car. Mostly it is older folks that already own property, have garages, etc.

The market has moved to mods that can be done more easily, to the daily driver. That means no really old cars.

For those that want horsepower, speed, handling, and braking, we ain't it.

You can build a Civic with a hairdryer with enough power to lay waste to every single car on this board in the quarter, and still be driven home from the track, and to work, for less than you could build an engine for one of our cars to beat that Civic.

If I changed the tune and put slicks on my wife's real estate mobile, it could take Squirrels Chevy II.

Enjoy the sunset.

 

Wouldn’t sound nearly as good doing it though.

 

The wifemobile has a V10. It sounds good.

 

Good question, I had just renewed in Sept. Car Kulture Deluxe - I guess it might be going the same way as Speed & Kulture? That means I am just down to Kustoms Illustrated.

 

Speed and Kultire is still going…

 

I am not an old man at 45 years old but I am realistic that a hot rod is a real builder oriented hobby most guys that get into it like the look of the car and they really like the fact that the entire car is built by them.
With the exception of the 1950s when it was pretty mainstream to build a Hot rod by a young person mind you those were 20 to 30 year old cars back then and they were everywhere at the local junk yards. This "sport" has always been a niche sport. A traditional built car that is reminiscent to the pre muscle car era is a niche with in the niche. We are building cars that are reminiscent to an era in history that was 60 to 80ish years ago.
As I have gotten more involved with this website in the last 5 or 6 months (I have been a member for years I just rarely logged on and always kept quiet) I have noticed a lot of people on this website talk trash on cars that are a little rat roddy or to street rod looking but I don't want to alienate anyone that built their car themselves and I can appreciate all of them for what they are, my personal taste are just like everyone else is on this website I prefer bias ply/ "Pie crust" tires and carbureted V8s or real early bangers or big Jimmy 6s but if I saw a guy my age or younger and he had some billet parts on a hot rod that he built himself I'm not going to criticize him I'm all for it. At the end of the day it's all about having fun and you and your machine and I am going to compliment him on it as a respect to a fellow gearhead because maybe we are a dying breed.
As for late model cars, since the beginning of time they have always been customized since when they were damn near new, as an example New, Darryl Starbird's Buick was a brand new car when it made the cover of Hot rod magazine, I view it as a retro space machine but at the time that was a brand new futuristic space machine and I have a rod and custom I want to say is from 1953 or 4 that ai have saved to mimic one day where they were showing how to section a shoebox Ford, mind you that was in the era of torches and brazing rods, that shoebox was damn near a brand new car when that article was wrote Today you see the same stuff but not to the extreme the world war II generation was doing it although occasionally there are some examples unfortunately we no longer have magazines to showcase them so giving you an example off the top of my head is a little harder but there are plenty of YouTube videos if you search for them of guys that have radically customized their cars.
As another example all my friends when I was in my twenties 1990s and early 2000s era) were into mini trucks, a couple of them were cover cars in mint truck magazines that unfortunately are no longer printed because that trend too died off. But just about every truck had all the traditional customizing done to them, Frenched tail lights, shaved handles, frenched antennas, phantom tube grills and typical hot rod stuff done to really boring economy trucks along with stuff that would have been done if it was around back in the day like huge stereo systems and airbag suspension. My point is newer cars got and get customized they always have Yeah its different then it was 70 years ago but people will always customize their daily drivers. My no longer new 2005 Dodge tow/pickup is bone stock but my previously enjoyed 1999 gas saver Saturn station wagon I am slowly smoothing/customizing to make it look a little less 25 year old mommy grocery getter and a bit more slick. It isn't a HAMB car but most people aren't going to be into HAMB cars or have the knowledge how to keep a carburetor in tune or how to adjust points, I went to college in the late 1990s and my instructor didn't even touch carburetors or points ignition systems when he was teaching us the basics mind you at that time coil on plugs were new technology and electric cars with the exception of the ev1 were 20 years away, somebody has to teach the outdated technology to a younger person and a younger person is going to have to have a suit to speak "old soul" to want to do with the outdated technology and understand that the slow lane is where a lot of these cars want to live. I am a true DIY person and I can't leave well enough alone so my cars get messed with my house is getting restored and getting all the bells and whistles from the era, pretty much every thing gets modified or restored , it's what I do. In automotive terms my vehicles are all really old and even though I consider that Saturn a late model car the reality is it's an antique in the automotive world and there is guys that are in their early twenties that don't really remember those cars on the road as weird as that is to me for them it's a vintage car, it's going to be real hard for a guy that has no formal training in automotive to learn about traditional hot rods it's going to get even harder now that the car magazines are just about all gone.

As for modern cars being fast there are some rocket ships for sure but overall you're crazy a majority of the vehicles on the road are mundane just like they always have been, yes A 2023 Honda Civic SI type r is a 13.5 second quarter mile according to Car and Driver and it is blazingly fast for an economy car I won't argue that but it's $45,300- and for for $45k it's pretty damn slow but I digress, they did not build that car for me Honda built that car for the everyday person that doesn't work on cars that want something sporty and fun that gets good gas mileage and has "road manners". My Model A pickup it looks like I'm on track to be in at about $12,000 bucks and when it weighs 2350lbs and makes a measly 280 horsepower out of its 283 Chevy it theoretically should run in the low 12s if it actually hooked up which means I could literally pat the gas going heels on a Civic for a ¼ the price, will my Model A be that fast probably not except on the online quarter mile calculator and to be honest I'm a little past the age where I just want to street race everything although I still sometimes get that hair up my ass but the reality is that model A even if it runs 14 flat it's faster than most cars on the road. Yeah some goofball and some electric car might be able to beat me but we will just play the turtle versus the hair and go a long distance then and what is even more important to me, the car has no computer, it always gets positive attention and if we are looking at which vehicle is going to pull a chick almost every broad is going to be attracted to a bright red Model A pickup and not some gay ass Tesla type car and if she is attracted to the Tesla I don't want nothing to do with her. She probably has blue hair and a nose ring and screams orange man bad all the time but I digress.
I don't think the automobile hobby is in the sunset just the magazines are. Our little corner of the automobile hobby I think is dwindling but how often do you see a hot rod in the spotlight? I mean when my parents' generation were young they had 77 sunset strip, The Munsters cars, 20 different surf bands singing about them, rock and roll singers singing about Cadillacs automobiles in general or more of an item that people lusted for, today automobiles are so reliable and so plain Jane look alike that most people view them like an appliance almost like a toaster oven as long as it doesn't burn your toast you're a happy camper.

As for the car mags Let's be realistic who here honestly subscribes to car magazines? I used to subscribe to Rod and Custom because I enjoyed the tech and once the rockabilly scene took off the magazine started doing more traditional rod write ups I was all about it, I don't think this website existed yet if it did I was unaware of it I didn't discover it until the height of the rockabilly retro scene back in probably 2005/2007 somewhere in there, this website has way more information than Rod and custom could have ever given me for a traditional car buildup and it wasn't full of sponsorship plugs. Then fast forward a few years and the new owners of the magazine decided to kill it and they tried to roll my subscription over into gay ass Hot Rod. In my opinion hot rod has been an abomination since about 1981. I don't want to read the Chevy heavy magazine and as it goes quarterly I really don't care it can die off, every time I have bought that magazine since high school I have been disappointed with the exception of three issues back in the mid 1990s when I was high school age that was can we run 12 for two grand, that was damn near 30 years ago if not longer. I won't miss it and the writing is on the wall, if they go quarterly with that magazine it will disappear within a few years it's already kind of irrelevant.
Now Old skool rodz I bought the first 5 years of that magazine literally every single issue same thing with car kulture deluxe I think the very first issue of car kulture deluxe was it called that I think it was called Hot Rod deluxe but I don't remember now but I have them stored away I thought both were an excellent magazines then old skool rodz bought car kulture deluxe and it was like looking at the same magazine with different pictures. Old skool rods had some pretty terrible build quality cars in their magazine so I quit buying it, I can appreciate a young person building a ratty ass hot rod but I can't appreciate somebody with money deliberately building a rat-rod. About 6 months ago maybe a year ago now I was going to pick up an issue of old skool rodz and I was having a hard time spending $9 for that magazine I think everybody was having a hard time spending 9 bucks for that magazine it's not a $9 magazine. It's a 5-6 buck mag and it sure the hell isn't worth 50 bucks a year to subscribe to it. These magazines are dying because they are outpacing inflation and now they have actual real competition with the internet and YouTube and they just can't compete and they keep raising their prices and in return less people by the magazine. There is no way that printing costs have went up more than inflation if anything they have went down back in 1960 Hot Rod magazine was .35¢ according to my inflation calculator today that would be $3.55 today I just literally looked it up 5 seconds ago the brand new issue of Hot Rod magazine on the cover says $7.99 it is literally over double what it should be.
That's $72 a year for something you're going to look at once or twice and then more than likely never open it again.
At any rate I don't think this is the sunset I think we are just going to see things change... I mean there are guys electrifying 32 Fords now... Absolutely horrifies me but that's the trend of the week, 30 or 35 years ago it was Mercedes power seats tilt columns and 17-in billet wheels, 75 years ago and 20 years ago it was "traditional" built cars. Most of us on this website just got lucky and we happen to be just the right age to see the retro revival and for a long time it was completely under ground and it was fun as hell when we were in the know and the billet rodders didn't get the memo that they weren't cool but when it went mainstream there was a ton of magazines catering to it and almost all of them fell when the trend died.
Today you are seeing a lot of guys build bangers, the race of gentlemen AKA trog is a great example it's pretty trendy and it's kind of underground it will never be as mainstream how's the young kids taking stolen mopars and other high power V8s and doing donuts in LA streets but it is the next trend in hot roding. How long will it last who knows will the mainstream pick up on it I doubt it but it should be fun regardless.

 

Just buy car magazines pre-1965 and read those. They don't cost much. You want to build traditional cars so why not see how it was done back in the original day. Reading about some modern build using many off topic parts but LOOKING traditional doesn't spin my crank.

 

Helluva thread guy!!

 

I was reading an article in one of the latest mags I received. Basicly, it was decided to go to full on subscriptions, no news stand copies. The article took a slant toward reorganizing their team of contributors. They also put up the staff to include bios and pictures.

 

Got my answers, from you all. !!

 

Yeah quite a run on sentence full of typos but it was relevant to who I responding to and their comment.

 

I would be skeptical of that magazine staying around in the long term. How are they going to attract new customers without having a new stand copy for new customers to flip through and every day their current subscription base will get smaller between those moving on from the hobby, those dieing off and those who just can't afford a subscription.
One thing I have learned on this website is there is a lot of car magazines that people have subscribed to and paid for that abruptly quit sending out new issues and went belly up, I would be afraid of your magazine doing the same. It's almost a self-fulfilling prophecy with what they are doing.

 

I would say the proof is in the pudding if no one’s buying off the news stand the attraction rate for new customers isn’t there anyways. Young guys don’t even know magazines were sold in grocery stores let alone buy them. I’d say they’d attract new customers like everything else, online and word of mouth.

it’s a different time

 

I listen/listened to their podcast. Always pushing keep print media alive. I figured I would give it a try in late Sept.. Went to their website got the error message on subscriptions. Called the phone number and left a message nothing. Emailed them nothing.
Just saw in the last couple of weeks on instagram that the podcast was getting ready to come back on as Season 3 Episode 1 with Skratch's Garage as the guest. Nothing yet. Interested in hearing anything about the magazines.

 

Honestly I started being skeptical about how long they were going to be around after I started noticing them having spots talking about their non car related political views on top of their blend into the rack cover redesign

 

They started a YouTube channel, but haven't done much with it.
https://www.youtube.com/@carkulturedeluxeolskoolrod3393

 

Good point and that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. Just scored a huge box of pocket mags last weekend