How the Early Years Set the Tone for the First 40 Years at HOT ROD Magazine

PART 2: THE 1950s / PART 3: THE 1960s / PART 4: THE 1970s / PART 5: THE 1980s / PART 6: THE FUTURE

The serenity of a barren, dry lakebed in the high desert north of Los Angeles is struck by the staccato sound of a straining flathead engine. The bark of the roadster's exhaust note belies its efforts to gain an advantage against an invisible aerodynamic force that prevents greater speed. Ahead of the highboy, a solitary blue-jeans-clad figure stands apart from the approaching race car. The man focuses his camera intently on the crude projectile, tripping the shutter at the precise moment to record the deed for his small band of subscribers. The man is Robert E. Petersen, and his publication is HOT ROD Magazine.

"HOT ROD is published to inform and entertain those interested in automobiles whose bodies and engines have been rebuilt in quest of better performance and appearance."

With those words came the introduction to the premier issue of HOT ROD Magazine in January 1948. It should not be surprising that the above editorial credo has survived the ravages of time, automotive evolution, and the scrutiny of millions of readers. What began as a precocious sport about high-performance automobiles has matured into a multi-million-dollar industry with an international following.

In celebration of this milestone in automotive performance history, we have dug deep into HOT ROD's archives to look at where we've been, the cars we've loved, and the people who have shaped our industry. We've even tempted fate with a glance into our future. So take a trip with us now, as we look at four decades of performance leadership.

After the original HOT ROD '27 T was stolen, Petersen replaced it with a '29 pickup, driven by another long-time Petersen employee, photographer Eric Rickman.

In Retrospect

By Jeff Smith

It is the classic American success story. A couple of young entrepreneurs, Robert E. "Pete" Petersen and an associate, Bob Lindsay, decided to enter the publishing business. Their magazine would target the growing interest in modified and race cars, despite the fact that no one in their organization knew anything about publishing. They chose to name their magazine "HOT ROD." The subject matter was a bold step, since hot rods were not a socially accepted subject for a publication in late 1947. Hot rodders were publicly regarded as young hellions who had earned a reputation for banzai street racing exhibitions and general automotive mayhem.

If hot rodding's notoriety was reason enough to question the magazine's success, its financial support was even more suspect. Petersen, Lindsay, and a few cronies had been recently fired from their jobs as publicists for MGM Studios, subsequently forming a small company called Hollywood Publicity Associates. One of Petersen's early accounts was the Southern California Timing Association (S.C.T.A.), whose secretary was a man by the name of Wally Parks. In early 1948, Hollywood Publicity Associates and the S.C.T.A. teamed up to produce a car show in an attempt to improve the hot rodder's image. The show was an instant success, and Petersen's relationship with Parks and the S.C.T.A. would prove to be intertwined in the coming years.

The early years also saw HOT ROD involved with numerous race-car sponsorships, including the "El Caballo" Pan American Mexican road race car driven by Ak Miller. Petersen is on the far left, with Publisher Ray Brock in the center.

According to Petersen, HOT ROD was truly a novice effort. "We really didn't understand what we were getting into at first. We just started it and let it flow—we were real babes in arms." HOT ROD wasn't even born in a real office. "Our first office was at the corner of Melrose and La Brea [in Los Angeles], where we rented a post office box for our mail. When we got richer, we rented a desk. Eventually I needed an apartment. One room had a bed that folded up into a couch. That was the secretary's office. The living room was our office."

With a gut feeling for the success of the magazine, their print order for the first issue of HOT ROD was 10,000 copies, selling for 25 cents apiece. "We figured to sell the magazines around at the tracks to people we knew," Petersen says. But that plan quickly changed as the demand grew. "It began with friends saying, 'Hey, give me some of those and I'll sell them for you.' We had a T pickup with a '42 Merc engine in it and we'd go around to newsstands and drop off some magazines." After suggestions from friendly newsstand owners, Petersen eventually signed with a national magazine distributor that quickly introduced HOT ROD Magazine to a nation of eager subscribers.

Much of Petersen's early work involved public relations, including this early television interview at the 1950 Motorama car show. Petersen is kneeling next to the car.

Even with growing sales figures and a $3 yearly subscription rate, the magazine suffered from constant cash-flow problems. Petersen remembers, "We'd walk around the races and sell subscriptions. Then at night when we got hungry, we'd go to the drive-in and sell subs until we had enough money for dinner! It was a real hand-to-mouth kind of thing."

Despite these tough beginnings, it was obvious that HOT ROD was destined for success. This was due in large part to the contributions of people such as HOT ROD'S first official editor, Wally Parks, who came aboard in late 1949, as well as one of its first reporters, Chicagoan Andy Granatelli. There was also an early staffer who was to remain with the company for over 35 years—Tom Medley. Petersen remembers that his first introduction to Tom Medley's work was at a legendary Pasadena speed shop. "We found Tom Medley's cartoons on the wall at Blair's Speed Shop and hired him." Of course, from those garage-wall cartoons eventually sprang the eternal hot rodder and early HOT ROD innovator Stroker McGurk.

This classic photograph was staged specifically for HOT ROD's 20th anniversary in 1968.

From these hesitant first steps grew a magazine that not only matured into a company which now produces 13 different monthly publications plus dozens of specialty magazines yearly, but is also responsible for several of today's major automotive organizations. Wally Parks left Petersen in the early 1960s to head the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA), which was started while Wally was editor of HOT ROD. The National Street Rod Association had its beginnings with HOT ROD Magazine, and Petersen supported the early beginnings of the Speed Equipment Manufacturer's Association, now known as the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA).

Throughout HOT ROD'S history, perhaps the most interesting point is that the magazine has not altered the concept that originally established it 40 years ago. From the beginning, Petersen has maintained that enthusiasts are hungry for information. "My byword then was guys want cars, cars, cars; I still believe that today."

This is Robert E. Petersen with some of his collection of cars from the 1960s. Note the Shelby Mustang on the far left and the Dodge Charger on the right.

As for the future of HOT ROD Magazine, Petersen says, "I think we'll see more practical kinds of cars that people will start building. That may be the future of hot rodding."

Regardless, HOT ROD will continue to be a dominant force in the performance industry. "As long as people are creative with their cars," Petersen says, "there will be a HOT ROD Magazine."

Stroker McGurk, the original hot rodder, as penned by long-time HOT ROD staffer Tom Medley.

What happened was this. Prior to hostilities, hot rodding was strictly a California-based enterprise. While it was true that fenderless cars with highly modified passenger car engines were built and raced throughout the country, they were built and raced by professionals on circle tracks for prize money. California's "gow jobs," hot irons, roadsters, or hop-ups were different.

The Early Years

By Gray Baskerville

If you were out in your garage working on your car on Saturday, December 6, 1941, but didn't live in Southern California at that precise moment, the term "hot rod" would have been about as obscure as the vehicle that it would eventually describe. That obscurity ended the next day. The attack on Pearl Harbor did more than get us into another world war: It also eventually transformed what was an ignored Southern California phenomenon into the multi-million-dollar automotive performance industry that it is today. And it all started with a pair of Bobs, a print order of 10,000 copies, and an outlaw-image title.

The original hot rods were built by kids in their backyards and were used for daily transportation. If they were raced, it was on the streets or at the dry lakes such as Muroc, Harpr, Rosamond, or EI Mirage.

Battle was done on the streets by hundreds of roadsters. In doing so, the drivers totally torqued off the cops, civic leaders, safety council, and even the PTA. Laws were drawn up in California to kill all forms of automotive competition, even to the extent of banning soap box derbies.

Since the early '20s, racing and race car building dominated the fledgling Los Angeles automotive scene. It was inevitable that racing cams, carburetors, cylinder heads, intake manifolds, and engines developed by the likes of Ed Winfield, the father of modern hot rodding, or Ed's contemporaries, would soon find their way into hopped-up jobs destined to do battle on SoCal's streets.

The Southern California Timing Association fought back by staging The First Annual Hot Rod Exposition at the Los Angeles National Guard Armory in January 1948. "Fifty of the Association members' finest cars," wrote the editors of HRM, "stressed safety, engineering, and mechanical innovation, and demonstrated the constructive side of roadster building."

During the three-day show, which drew 55,000 spectators, "a small group of roadster experts (including Bill Burke, right) converted a dilapidated '32 Ford roadster into a sleek hot rod, complete with every mechanical improvement, to prove that a true hot rod is not a car minus fenders but a precision-built automobile." The positive public relations from the show helped kill the antirod legislation.

From January '48 to December '49 the vast majority of HOT ROD Magazine's editorial content centered on track roadsters, lakes meets, tech articles, and an occasional street roadster. This particular photo of Andy Linden (No. 5) trying to pass Troy Ruttman (No. 20) during a night race at Bonelli Stadium in Saugus, California, appeared in the first issue of HRM.

While the SCTA sponsored the show, a public relations firm, Hollywood Associates, staffed by R.E. "Pete" Petersen, Lee O. Ryan, and Bill Barsky, actually did all the footwork. At the same time, Pete (left) and Bob Lindsay started work on HOT ROD Magazine with an on-sale date of January 1948. Here, Associate Editors Pete and Bob check "galleys" during the late '40s.

Until the early '50s, when organized drag racing took over the hot rod movement, the dry lakes reigned supreme. More than 150 roadsters would compete at El Mirage. Rodders would drive their rods to the lakebed on Saturday, remove the headlights and windshield, uncork the lakes pipes, slap on a tarp, and have at it. The process would be reversed after the race on Sunday afternoon.

Rod activities also included reliability runs and picnics. In the late '40s, Pete, then HRM co-publisher (arrow), hosted circle-burning chingos at ranches in the area with oval dirt tracks.

Hot rod shows were still a viable part of hot rodding during the 1948-'49 era of HOT ROD Magazine, as shown by this photo taken of Bill Burke's and Don Francisco's record-holding belly tank. As for the model, she too qualified as a 'Parts With Appeal" personality.

Meanwhile, the lakes were becoming overcrowded and overused, so Pete and Wally (Wally Parks had become HRM's first editor in '49) sweet-talked the Governor of Utah into letting the rodders race on the Bonneville salt flats. Here, checking out the flats before the first Bonneville Nationals, are Lee Ryan, Fred Woodward, Bozzy Willis, and George Prussell. In the bottom row, from left, are George Radnich, Marv Lee, Wally, and Pete.

With the explosive growth of hot rodding during this time, speed shops began popping up like pistons throughout the rest of the country. Here in Southern California it was different. Speed shops had been with us since the early '30s when Lee Chapel opened his shop on San Fernando Road in '33. But the real hub of hot rodding activity before and after the war was Bell Auto, the home of Cragar goodies.

By '49, HRM's circulation had jumped from an original 10,000 copies to 50,000 … and rods like Jim Berger's Fronty T were one of the reasons for the success. Another reason was that the GIs came to Southern California and saw, for the first time, our rods and customs. Likewise, when local rodders went east to train they showed their buddies snapshots of their rods, and so the rodding gospel was spread throughout the country.

Speed Week was just as successful 39 years ago as it was in '87. Top speed of the first Nationals was set by Alex Xydias' and Dean Batchelor's SoCal streamliner at 194 mph. And you'll note that there are no coupes or sedans in this photo. The SCTA didn't allow closed cars to compete at their events during the late '40s, but this rule was changed in 1950.

Editorially, in that two-year period from January '48, when HRM first appeared, to December '49, when circulation was in excess of 55,000 copies, the magazine never mentioned drag racing except to put down clandestine street racing. But in '49, the Santa Barbara Acceleration Association conducted the first sanctioned drag race on an unused, two-lane road at the old airport in Goleta, California. Hot rodding would never be the same again.

Hand-colored lead image: Ellen Kimble

MOTORTREND and HOT ROD's rich magazine history and legacy dating back to 1948 is something highly valued by its longtime readers, and that's why we've invested deeply to make the content available to you in a modern and accessible format. In the interest of transparency, these magazine articles are presented as originally published, without modification, and may contain content that does not reflect the company's contemporary values and standards.