One of the toughest parts about putting together The Rodder’s Journal every quarter is leaving good material out. There’s a limited amount of space on each page and there’s no possible way to make it all fit (trust us, we’ve tried!) And so we’re left with a whole lot of extra content on the cutting room floor. Today, we’d like to share a slew of outtakes from our latest issue, Rodder’s Journal #74, which is available here.
While researching our story on the original “15oz. Coupe,” we discovered that it was a hot rod long before it hit the drag strip. When Les Hawkins bought it in 1958, it had already received its heavy chop (seven inches up front, five inches out back) and was set up as a highboy. Here it is in its early-’60s iteration annihilating the tires off the line—a regular occurrence with its direct-drive, nitro-burning Hemi.
Kevin Anderson’s ’63 Buick Riviera is radical exercise in restraint. It’s chopped, shaved, slammed and slathered in Candy Gold—and it looks best out on the streets. Photographer John Jackson snapped this shot of the “Goldtop” outside the historic Fountain Square Theatre in downtown Indianapolis, Indiana.
It took just three months for veteran New Jersey hot rodder Joe Conforth to build this slippery single-seater. For being such a seemingly simple car, it’s loaded with details inside and out from the modified Model A friction shocks sunken into the lightened frame rails to the dual-carbed Lincoln flathead. Photographer Michael Alan Ross shot the Modified before the rain rolled in at the Race of Gentlemen West.
James Hetfield’s “Aquarius” is another neo-classic knockout from Rick Dore and the father-son team of Marcel and Luc De Ley. Although it may look like it’s a static display piece, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Drew Phillips captured the coachbuilt custom at rest after some action shots on California’s beautiful Pacific Coast Highway.
As you read this, Justin and Evin Veazie are in the final stages of getting Justin’s ’30 A-V8 ready for the road. We were fortunate enough to shoot it in our studio while the body could easily be hoisted off the frame, allowing us to get a closer glimpse of not only the 3x2-fed Buick nailhead, but also all the beautiful fab-work that has since been covered by the floorboards.
We’ve been Tom Medley fans for as long as we can remember, and we were particularly excited to collaborate with his son, Gary, on our excerpt of his new book Stroker: The Artistic Works of Tom Medley. Even though the book takes a look at all of his incredible illustration work through the years, we couldn’t help but share this classic from Stroker McGurk: “Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blew.” Click here to purchase the book from our TRJ Library.
It’s no secret that beach racing is taking off around the globe, and in this issue we get the full story of two new events for 2016: The Race of Gentlemen West in California and the Rømø Motor Festival in Denmark. Here Jim Luke squares his flathead-powered Model A up against Texan Brian Bass and his Deuce roadster.
The Rømø Motor Festival may be a new event, but it brought participants from across Europe to compete out on the sand in their early style hot rods and motorcycles. David Carlo captured Swede Ronnie Lindblom and his supercharged Deuce roadster racing against Jan-Olof Ödahl’s chopped ’32 three-window.
For information about the new issue, click here, or give us a call at (800) 750-9550 in the United States, (877) 479-2627 in Canada or (650) 246-8920 internationally.
