Hot Rod April 2022

Editor-in-Chief @john.mcgann At the end of 2020, my career took an interesting divergence. In some ways, it wasn’t so far off from where I started, but in other ways, it was an entirely new experience for me. MotorTrend Group is bringing back the Car Craft name as a video build series, and I was, unwittingly at first, caught up in the movement. As many readers likely know, Car Craft is where I came from. I worked on that magazine from 2006 until 2018 when I slid over to HOT ROD. Car Craft met an untimely demise late in 2019, along with 18 of our other print titles as the company shifted priorities to our digital properties and the MotorTrend App streaming service. As painful as that was, I understand the decision, ultimately.…

20 Years Ago April 2002, 124 pages, $3.99 Miss HOT ROD 2002, Lisa Lingon graced the cover in this picture shot by Wes Allison. The car was Steve Sbelgio’s ’34 Ford coupe dubbed “The Millennium Kid” by author Ro McGonegal. Why? “It drives modern, smells modern, squeezes a computer-controlled automatic transmission clinging to an all-aluminum engine, and has amassed electronic cues and micro-processed LED fireflies up the ying-yang,” said Ro, and that’s reason enough for us. It must have been shocking to see an LS1 in the engine compartment of this car back then, in fact, it’s still a little shocking to me today. Nonetheless, this car sported an LS1/4L80E combination that had no problem lighting up the rear tires on a whim. Being a paint-and-body themed issue, there was the tried-and-true…

Drag racing has had some famous rivalries. Long before Don “The Snake” Prudhomme mixed it up with Tom “The Mongoose” McEwen, years before “Big Daddy” Don Garlits called out Shirley “Cha Cha” Muldowney, there was Bill Jenkins versus Jere Stahl. In 1966, it was the greatest rivalry in drag racing. The unlikely battlefield was Top Stock, an eliminator category chiefly populated by garishly painted production cars. The unlikely combatants were a pair of bookish engineer/racers. In comparison to the thundering Top Fuelers and nascent nitro-burning Funny Cars, Top Stock provided little sound and no fury. Yet the season-long struggle between Bill Jenkins and Jere Stahl was a clash of the titans: Chevrolet versus Chrysler, small-block versus Hemi, privateer versus factory. In short, this was drag racing’s version of David and Goliath. It…

This defies description. The longer you look at this ’54 Chevy, the more amorphous it becomes. It’s not Pro Street, but it does have big tires. It’s not Pro Touring, but it does have a six-speed manual and big brakes. And it’s most certainly not a custom, yet it offers some classic custom touches that you must search carefully to identify. With those items checked, this ride checks off all the above—and more. Scott Sullivan built this ride. The HOT ROD faithful will instantly recognize his name: Someone who has long been associated with cars that set trends and have that magic stance, an indefinable look that one observer recounted, “As soon as that car rolled into the show, I instantly knew it was a Scott Sullivan car.” Our narrative will take…

There’s an old saying that goes something like, “They are only original once.” The implication is that being original is pretty special. Well, this 1937 Ford truck is about as original as you can expect for an 84-year-old ride. Even more amazing is that this ’37 has been owned by the same Kansas family since the day it was bought new from the Ford dealer! The truck was purchased in July 1937, the same month and year the original owner’s daughter, the current owner, was born. The family grew wheat in Kansas, and needed a truck to haul the wheat to the market in town. Back then, trucks were tools to be used hard and replaced when they could no longer be fixed. The owner recalled growing up with the truck…

The incredible history of this 1955 Ford Thunderbird goes back 66 years, stretching from the West Coast to the East Coast, and includes a couple of legendary rod shops and a few famous hot rod builders. Our first look at Dave Simard’s incredible custom came from the photos taken by Chuck Vranas for an East Coast Custom shop tour story from a 2012 issue of Street Rodder Premium magazine. Dave is the owner of the Leominster, Massachusetts shop, and he’s owned the Thunderbird since 2000, when he bought it from the original owner and builder, Bob Hoshiko. In the ’50s, Burbank, California, was hallowed ground in the hot rodding hobby, the site of some of the most prominent rod and custom shops. Bob Hoshiko, a customizer working at Colgan’s Auto Upholstery, was…