Book Review: Hot Rod Magazine – All the Covers

HOT ROD Magazine: All the Covers

Ever find yourself searching through a stack of old Hot Rod magazines at a swap meet? When ever I do, I’m pretty amazed at how you’re able to tell the era of the magazine simply by the cover. Usually as I flip through them I catch myself thinking “late 70′s, mid 80′s, ahh here’s an early 60′s”… all from the information presented to me on the cover.

Getting your vehicle featured on the cover of Hot Rod magazine has to be the ultimate reward for a builder.  It’s one thing to be lucky enough to receive a feature in the most influential automotive magazine of all time, but making the cover is simply iconic as you are now locked forever into the history of hot rodding. Imagine if you could some how capture all those amazing covers in one place, all 60+ years worth? Well your lucky day is here with the newly released book: HOT ROD Magazine: All the Covers by Drew Hardin along with the editors of HOT ROD.

I simply love this book and I have shared it with several of the hot rod veterans in my town. Smiles and laughter, along with countless stories, followed as they took a trip down memory lane. Their eyes brightened time and time again as they recalled covers and feature cars that influenced their personal builds. Several of the gentlemen I spoke with were featured in Hot Rod magazine over the years and knew the cover at first glance, though they had not laid eyes upon it in decades. It’s amazing what an impact these covers have upon our memories!

The book itself is an overload of the visual senses, with all the beautiful art work and photography of 6 decades at your fingertips. Each cover is described in detail giving the reader a true feel for the styles and builders direction of the era.

This book is a must have for any hot rod enthusiast, and a reference that will be sought out time and time again.

Book Review: How to Design Cars Like a Pro

Famous Car Designers Say How it’s Done

Have you ever attended a manufacturers’ auto show and wondered what it takes to design a modern automobile? Then, Motorbooks’ new title “How to Design Cars Like a Pro”, written by Tony Lewin and Ryan Borroff, is for you.

This totally revised 2010 edition of the classic first released in 2003 takes you into the world of auto design. It includes interviews with top designers and top car makes such as Marek Reichman of Aston Martin and Adrian van Hooydonk of BMW. It also includes the design inspirations of such modern vehicles like the Chevrolet Camaro and the Volkswagen Scirocco. Find out what a typical week looks like for a designer by following chief designer at Land Rover, Oliver le Grice, as he goes about his week.

11.50 at 120mph Money-back Performance Guarantee

Who was Joel Rosen? Ever heard of Baldwin-Motion? Or maybe just, “Motion Performance”?

Back in the late 50′s and early 60′s, a young Joel Rosen finished high school at only 17 to begin college, but then joined the Air Force to get some more hands on experience. It was at Shepards Air Force Base where Rosen fine tuned his engine tuning and mechanical skills that he later used to hot rod his first car, a 1955 Olds 88 that ended up with a 4 barrel  and a McCullough supercharger. From there, Rosen bought his high school dream car, a fuelie 58 ‘vette, and used tune-up work and brake jobs to fund his real passion:  Build Motion Performance Super Cars.

This new book by Motorbooks publishing, Motion Performance: Tales of a Muscle Car Builder by Martyn L. Schorr, a man who obviously was THERE, says:

Mr. Motion was responsible for building, racing and selling the most outrageous low-volume-production, high-performance, new-car-dealer-delivered Chevrolets you could buy during those freewheeling decades. Baldwin-Motion Chevys have since become highly prized mega-priced collectibles that best define the Decade of Extreme Performance.

This book is recommended by MyRideisMe.com.  Here’s why:

• Pictures of a fun loving Rosen doing wheels-up launches in the streets with his “Phase III”
• “Money-back guaranteed” 427 big block super cars with the history included
• It made me long for the days when baby Pikesan wasn’t even a slight twinkle in my boy-father’s eye
• Back then, “Green” was just the color between yellow and blue in the rainbow.

Money-back? Yea, they guaranteed their 427 Camaro would run 11.50 and 120 mph or they’d give you your money back!  And… believe it or not, it’d behave on the street all day long!  The secret? It wasn’t! They simply, “Raced what we built.” They also broke records all over the place and made a name for themselves.  It’s simple “Win on Sunday, sell on Monday” at it’s finest.

It surprised me, and maybe just from never looking into it, that dyno tuning engines has been around a long time.  Now-a-days, there’s a chassis dyno in every town and for not much money, you can run your ride to get the true, rear-wheel horsepower. You know the factory stated BS-power number’s usually 25% or more over what’s actually moving your ride down the road. This picture shows Rosen tuning the Weber carbed small block Ford Cobra called, “Dragginsnake” on the dyno.  Header length, injector stack length and of course, timing and fuel mix make the engine run right and win or shoot ducks and lose at the track. Rosen’s tune frequently hit the mark as evidence by all the trophies surrounding them on the wall.

Back to the “Win on Sunday” theme, check this out.  Imagine cruising into the Detroit or LA Auto Shows, two of the biggest new car shows now-a-days, or the New York Auto Show (back in 1967 -1968) and seeing then buying a 69 Phase III 427 Camaro like this one.  As Rosen’s sign says, “Don’t be a performance dropout!”  Shown below, Rosen’s on the left shaking hands and taking an order for another 11 second street beast.  I hope this kind of performance (but not the skinny ties) make their way back to future some day.

Fast-forwarding through several chapters of this 176 page book… You’ll find the Cobras and Corvettes that started it all, Camaro’s, more ‘vettes, Biscaynes and Chevelles, then later, “Motion Super Vegas” and even VW Bugs.  Those Chevy’s sported RPO numbers that by themselves make the Chevy faithful drool like L-88 and L-89.  Tying it all together, there’s more great pictures and info about the venerable SS 427′s built by Rosen, how they tuned it and won.

I won’t give away the sad ending. Suffice to say, the 70′s weren’t a great time for performance cars and suddenly Motion Super Cars were only available for “export and off-road use only.” Damn!

Still, this book’s a great addition to your Chevy nostalgia book collection and fits well into the, “Those guys were building some crazy rides!” library.  Get the book at discount from Amazon here.

Any great stories about Motion-Performance cars or other street racing legends like “The Real Silver Bullet” GTX from Woodward Ave please let us know. I’ll get that story online! Comment below.

The Legendary Custom Cars and Hot Rods of Gene Winfield

The Legendary Custom Cars and Hot Rods of Gene Winfield is a new offering from Motorbooks written by David Grant.

The title could have had an addendum that says “A pure automotive styling genius far ahead of his time.” I became a huge fan of Gene from the first time I laid eyes on his creations in the “little books” when I lived on the East coast. The book gives you a tremendous insight as to how he did what he did. This man just went out and built his dreams. If there was a part he needed and was not available, he manufactured it. Gene fabricated his own dual carb intake manifold for his ’31 Model A, constructed custom headlight rings from hub caps, fingertip control steering and a camera & small television to substitute for a rear view mirror are a few of his innovations.

 

 

Within the storyline of this book we are allowed into his private life by hearing stories about him from former members of the Century Toppers Car Club as well as former coworkers “Hammer Happy” and Sam Foose. The text is very interesting and easy to read, but what makes this book in my opinion is all the fantastic photography. There are many never before published photos of Gene at work on many projects as well as completed cars. I was able to see the Jade Idol in person when it was on display at an Oakland, CA art museum as part of a display and the photos in this publication are dead on. We are lucky that Gene carried a camera with him almost everywhere he went so that we could revel in what caught his eye.

At the 2005 SEMA show in Las Vegas, I had the good fortune to meet Gene. He was very personable, kind and genuine answering all and any questions asked. He autographed a poster of his ’61 Cadillac “Maybelline” for me and I keep it proudly framed in my den.

In conclusion all I can say is get off your butt and go buy this one of a kind book. You won’t regret it.

Len Stupski

Dean Jeffries: 50 Fabulous Years in Hot Rods, Racing and Film

Dean Jeffries
50 Fabulous Years in Hot Rods, Racing and Film
By Tom Cotter

This new book on Dean Jeffries, written by Tom Cotter (and forwarded by Bruce Meyer) is a fun look at the career of one of the most under-rated builders of all-time. As stated right from the beginning, Jeffries was never one to “toot his own horn”, and this may be a large part of the reason that many folks don’t know that much about this incredibly talented man. While he was one of the pioneers of the custom car movement (alongside the more “celebrity” names like Barris, Winfield, Von Dutch and Ed Roth), he’s always been relegated to the footnotes, or seems to play the “behind-the-scenes” role more often than not.

The humble visionary was born in Lynwood, California in 1933, the second of three children, and from an early age took an interest in cars… but preferred metal work to mechanical, as he hated to get his hands dirty. His father being a mechanic and truck driver who wrenched on race cars (midgets, namely), took young Dean to the races, further inspiring him.

Jeffries left school early to join the Army, and served during the Korean War, but was stationed in Germany, where he served duty as a map maker, and began pinstriping. Upon returning home, he worked nights in a machine shop to spend his days as an apprentice under Ken “Von Dutch” Howard. Eventually Jeffries became the “house striper” at Barris Kustom, honing his metalworking skills, and becoming a contractor to Barris, and plied his craft on such cars as the Ala Kart, Clarence Catallo’s ’32 Ford (the very same from the Beach Boys’ Little Deuce Coupe album cover).

Moving from Barris’ shop to Hollywood, Jeffries was in a prime location to serve movie stars, and began building specialty vehicles for the motion picture industry.

The book delves into the well-known Jeffries-Barris rivalry, offering insight to those who may not have been initiated to this historic debate. What’s truly interesting about this small part of the book is that Cotter not only gives Jeffries’ side, but takes time to talk with Barris as well, making for an entertaining aside.

As the book moves forward, we gain extensive insight to Jeffries’ personal life, detailing his long marriage to his late wife Row, underscoring her importance to him in many ways, and being the driving force behind his never-ending creativity. We’re treated to an extensive look at his creations, including some absolutely incredible photos from Jeffries’ personal collection, as well as those collected from sources close to him.

From the aluminum masterpiece “Mantaray” to the Kyote dune buggies, we’re treated to some wildly insightful looks at the creative process, as well as Dean’s great business mind. Moving forward to his work on the Ford Custom Car Caravan (and his ahead-of-its-time Falcon Python), to the supremely well-designed Deano Toronado, we begin to see the scale of his creative genius.

There is some tremendous coverage and in-progress photography of his many movie and television cars, including the Green Hornet’s Black Beauty, the Monkeemobile, and the absolutely immense Landmaster for the film Damnation Alley (looking over Jeffries’ designs and engineering thought for this project is almost worth the price of admission alone).  Being a creative, yet practical customizer, Jeffries built a mobile shop from a van to handle on-set repairs for movie cars, and we get a glimpse of what was, at the time a state-of-the-art rolling repair shop.

Following some mini-features on many of Dean’s creations over the years, the book hooks a big turn to his involvement in motorsports, painting cars for the Indy 500, and even includes some of his designs for an Indy car from the early 1960′s.

If all of that weren’t enough, we learn about Jeffries’ work as a stuntman, performing feats that today would be deemed as too unsafe, and on one notable occasion while jumping a bridge with a truck, he broke his back. Some fantastic photos accompany this part of the book, and they go well beyond the typical studio PR shots, keeping with the book’s “personal” feel.

Overall, a very well presented book, loaded with rare photos and insight, and one of those “must-have’s” for any fan of hot rods and custom cars. It has that fabulous, high-quality Motorbooks feel with sharp photos, just the right size text, and thick pages with just enough sheen to look great, but not glare when reading. Truly a great addition to any collection, and it’ll even look bitchin’ on your coffee table!

–Brian Stupski, Problem Child Kustoms

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