The Business of Speed: The Hot Rod Industry in America, 1915–1990

Notes

introduction 1. This biographical sketch draws together material from Dean Batchelor, The American Hot Rod (Osceola, Wis.: MBI Publishing, 1995), 179–80; Ed Almquist, Hot Rod Pioneers : The Creators of the Fastest Sport on Wheels (Warrendale, Pa.: SAE, 2000), 90–91; and Steve Hendrickson, “Introduction,” in Hot Rod Magazine: The First 12 Issues (Osceola, Wis.: MBI Publishing, 1998), 4–5. 2. Almquist claims that they ordered 10,000 copies of their debut issue, but in their October 1948 issue, Petersen and Lindsay claim to have published only 5,000. See “Editor ’s Column,” Hot Rod Magazine, October 1948, 5. Hereafter, Hot Rod Magazine, also known as Hot Rod, is cited as HRM. 3. Their January 1948 issue was ready in December 1947, which is when the hot rod exposition opened. 4. “Editor’s Column,” HRM, January 1949, 7. 5. In September 1949, Petersen and Lindsay launched Motor Trend, a general-interest automotive publication designed to complement Hot Rod’s more specialized coverage, and the following May they added a third, Cycle (Batchelor, American Hot Rod, 180–81). Although Petersen bought him out in 1950, Lindsay continued to co-publish Hot Rod through April of 1952. 6. Forbes, 13 September 1982, 153. 7. Forbes, 14 October 1996, 286. In this edition, Forbes estimated that the sale of the Petersen Publishing empire generated $450 million; subsequent Forbes 400 lists corrected the figure to $500 million. 8. Dean Batchelor vividly recalls meeting Petersen for the first time at the October 19, 1947, Southern California Timing Association (SCTA) meet at El Mirage Dry Lake, where Petersen cornered Batchelor’s friend and racing partner Alex Xydias in an attempt to sell an advertisement for Alex’s fledgling speed shop (Batchelor, American Hot Rod, 179). 9. Hot Rod first exceeded fifty pages of coverage in April 1951, and its circulation reached 500,000 copies in September 1952. 10. “World’s Most Complete Hot Rod Coverage” was the magazine’s first slogan; today it remains the largest automotive enthusiast publication on the market. 11. Batchelor, American Hot Rod, 181. 12. “Editor’s Column,” HRM, January 1948, 3. NOTES 248 n o t e s t o p a g e s 4 – 5 13. Technically, another enthusiast magazine called Speed Age beat Hot Rod to market by several months, but its coverage was more diffuse: Speed Age was not devoted specifically to hot rodding, as was Hot Rod. 14. Enthusiasts spent $34 billion in 2006 (Angus MacKenzie, “SEMA Moments,” Motor Trend, January 2007, 10), up from $26 billion five years earlier (Specialty Equipment Market Association [SEMA], “2002 Automotive Specialty Equipment Industry Update,” 2 [SEMA Research Center, SEMA Headquarters, Diamond Bar, California—hereafter, SEMA-RC]). 15. Among the best of these popular titles, apart from Almquist’s Hot Rod Pioneers and Batchelor’s American Hot Rod, are Don Montgomery, Hot Rods in the Forties: A Blast from the Past (Fallbrook, Calif.: D. Montgomery, 1987); Montgomery, Hot Rods As They Were: Another Blast from the Past (Fallbrook: D. Montgomery, 1989); Art Bagnall, Roy Richter: Striving for Excellence (Los Alamitos, Calif.: Art Bagnall Publishing, 1990); Tom Medley and LeRoi Smith, Tex Smith’s Hot Rod History, Volume One: The Beginnings (Osceola, Wis.: Motorbooks International, 1990); Montgomery, Hot Rod Memories: Relived Again (Fallbrook: D. Montgomery, 1991); Montgomery, Supercharged Gas Coupes: Remembering the Sixties (Fallbrook: D. Montgomery, 1993); Medley and Smith, Tex Smith’s Hot Rod History, Volume Two: The Glory Years (North Branch, Minn.: CarTech, 1994); Montgomery , Authentic Hot Rods: The Real “Good Old Days” (Fallbrook: D. Montgomery, 1994); Montgomery, Those Wild Fuel Altereds: Drag Racing in the Sixties (Fallbrook: D. Montgomery, 1997); Peter Vincent, Hot Rod: An American Original (St. Paul: MBI Publishing Company, 2001); Jerry Burton, Zora Arkus-Duntov: The Legend Behind Corvette (Cambridge, Mass.: Bentley Publishers, 2002); Ron Roberson, Middletown Pacemakers: The Story of an Ohio Hot Rod Club (Chicago: Arcadia, 2002); Robert Genat and Don Cox, The Birth of Hot Rodding: The Story of the Dry Lakes Era (St. Paul, Minn.: Motorbooks International, 2003); Mark Christensen, So-Cal Speed Shop: The Fast Tale of the California Racers Who Made Hot Rod History (St. Paul: Motorbooks, 2005); and Tom Madigan, Edelbrock: Made in USA (San Diego: Tehabi Books, 2005). 16. Strictly speaking, H. F. Moorhouse’s Driving Ambitions: A Social Analysis of the American Hot Rod Enthusiasm (New York: Saint Martin’s Press, 1991), Robert C. Post’s High Performance: The Culture and Technology of Drag Racing (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), and John DeWitt’s Cool...