Hot Rod March 2023

Over the last several months, I’ve made a concerted effort to find and feature “traditional” hot rods, and that stuff has finally started showing up here in these pages. I hope you’ve been enjoying the RPM Nationals coverage, seeing Gray Baskerville’s ’32 Ford featured on the cover, and reading about the ’31 Model A that Troy Ladd is building during his free time. I’m sensitive to the fact that I tend to focus our edit on cars from the mid-’60s and newer. One of the most common complaints is that there aren’t enough hot rods in HOT ROD, and I’ve been working to address that. We have plenty more “old car” edit in the works that you will soon see here in the magazine and on HotRod.com, things like coverage of…

20 Years Ago March 2003: 116 pages, $3.99 The main blurb teases the cover car as the ’05 Mustang, but Editor Ro McGonegal’s story and Randy Lorentzen’s photography capture Mustang coupe and convertible concept cars, created at Ford Design California to “have an impact on the production Mustang,” said Executive Designer Richard Hutting. These cars do look a lot like the fifth-generation S197 Mustangs to come, though with show-car interiors and mechanical elements—like independent rear suspensions—that took another generation to appear. The recent SEMA Show figured in two features: “Homage to the Loud Pedal” about the special car builds Ford, GM and DaimlerChrysler brought to the show, and “101 Speed Parts,” new performance and appearance components that debuted in Vegas. Also featured was Troy Trepanier’s latest creation, a customized ’62 Chevy Biscayne…

The 1957 running of Speedweeks at Daytona Beach was a busy time for Editor Wally Parks and Research Editor Ray Brock. Their top priority was for Parks to hustle the Hemi-powered Suddenly Plymouth Savoy across the Florida sand in search of a new speed record, but they were there to also document the other speed contests taking place on and off the sand. In those years before the tri-oval Speedway was built, NASCAR held its stock car races on a 4.1-mile course with a 2-mile straightaway on the beach and another 2-mile straightaway on an adjoining road, “connected by two tight, banked turns that are so dry and ‘loose’ that it seems almost impossible to abuse wheels, hubs, steering components, or other parts of the chassis,” Brock wrote in the May…

You’ve never seen another flathead like the one in this ’32 roadster. This engine is one of a kind, full of unique engineering ideas from the nimble mind of Dick Raczuk. Dick is one of the fortunate ones who can say, “I never went to work a day in my life.” He always loved what he did for a living. Still sharply focused at age 83, he’s been tinkering with things mechanical since he dropped a Cadillac mill into his Model A as a teenager. He has owned several businesses over the years, starting with a go-kart shop in the 1960s. A few years later he owned Kerker, which in the ’70s and ’80s was the No. 1 motorcycle exhaust company in the world. “We sold 50,000 exhaust systems a year, and…

For Rich Rossi of West Nyack, New York, having an Olds in the garage brings back copious memories of good times from his well-spent youth. “When I was in high school, I had a ’57 Super 88. I loved that car. As a Vietnam veteran and having grown up in the 50’s and 60’s, Oldsmobiles just seem to bring me back to those enjoyable and raucous days of my teenage years,” states Rich. The hot rod aficionado has had many cars of assorted models since then, but somehow he’s always ended up going back to the Olds brand. So, while looking for a similar ’57 to build into his next dream ride, he stumbled upon an interesting ’56 Olds 88 Holiday Hardtop Coupe for sale online out of Florida. “I had…

Cars from all over California and as far away as Arizona, Washington, and Colorado made the trip to Santa Margarita Ranch for the sixth annual RPM Nationals Flathead Drags on September 24, 2022. Located halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, Santa Margarita Ranch is a 14,000-acre property with everything you would expect from a ranch: rolling hills, trees, old barns, cattle, and a vineyard. What’s unexpected is that in the middle of it all is an old, paved runway—the perfect location for an old-school eighth-mile drag race. The rules for the RPM Nationals were simple: Entries had to be model year 1936 or earlier and had to be powered by a flathead four-cylinder or V8 engine. All race cars had to be period-correct and appear to be from the 1950s…