Online Hot Rod Magazine and Custom Car Pics

Nostalgia drag racing all weekend in Beaver Springs, PA Located about an hour's drive north of Harrisburg, PA, Beaver Springs Dragway is a dragstrip with lots of heart. The crew running the show goes out of their way to make you feel like part of the family. Their advertising slogan is "Nobody does it better!" and I would have to say that's definitely not false advertising! The "Beav" is the perfect location for Gasser Magazine's Gasser Reunion that was held June 10-12. We hit the road early to make the 3 hour drive from our home base in WV and it rained the entire trip! When we arrived, the spectators' parking field had an inch of standing water. Do you ever get the feeling that maybe you are wasting your time making a long trip for nothing? Well, luckily that feeling for us was wrong and the sun was shining by 8:30am. Everyone was able to enjoy a full day of racing. Randy Campbell's 1950 "Full Metal Jacket" Studebaker sits in the pits drying after the early morning rain. The track crew did an excellent job getting the dragstrip prepared...

Hot Rod Roadsters - Only the Pretty Ones at 2011 LA Roadster Show (click on any picture to see it full size) I mentioned in the 2011 LA Roadster Show kick-off story there's three parts of the show: the "Proper" roadster show, the "other" cars (also the part I like best!) and the swap meet. I'd say there's four parts if you include the Pomona SoCal Speed Shop open house. We'll cover all of those for you at MyRideisMe.com! Stay tuned and check back often! As you can see, there was no shortage of custom hot rods at the show. The key difference for the LA Roadster Show is of course, they all must be roadsters. The strict definition is "no roll up windows" but who cares! If the top comes off, it's a roadster to me. By the afternoon, the sky had finally cleared from its dreary (and miserable to photograph!) gray color and was showing a beautiful blue sky. Isn't this what we always think of for California? The few Model T's and late 30's and 40's roadsters were easy to spot and served to break up...

Custom Hot Rods Rock the LA Roadsters Back again! For the 5th year, this is one of the best hot rod and custom car shows you'll see, in California, or maybe anywhere. It's easy to see why this show's a success: The Roadster Show "proper" - finished, shiny painted no-roof cars only The "Other" cars... every other custom car in So-cal, pre '75, want'n a primo parking spot A freakin HUGE swap meet!! (if this doesn't get yer motor turn'n... move on now) Make your way to Pomona, make sure to Learn the NEW LA Roadster Show layout and enjoy what we found... 2011 LA Roadsters Show Here's how the day starts for most people attending the LA Roadster Show. It's a massive line. We arrived at about 3:30AM on Friday morning (no we're not psycho, that's just when we arrived from AZ!) and were in the 5th line. Each line was about 1/2 mile long with trucks, trailers and RV's filled with swap'n goodies. It's not long before you realize... you might see just about anything... Look closely, that's a right hand driver Chevy Ute. When's the last...

Cool Hot Rods and Customs from Australia It wasn't easy, but after 6 cell calls and struggling through the crowds at 2011 Viva Las Vegas, I finally met up with Luke Ray, the creative mind behind Fuel Magazine. Fuel Magazine's all about the hot rods, custom cars, bikes and oh yes... the girls that make Australia's scene one not to miss. Available in the traditional styled "Small book" format, it's a very high quality publication where no expense is spared on printing. The latest issue, #07 is "'The Customs Issue". Luke figured it'd be cool to do a customs biased issue, seeing as there are so many cool custom cars here in Australia. Sounds great to me... my book's in the mail. Luke also features some of the world's greatest artists. Here's a quick sample that's not so coincidentally pretty friendly on the eyes. One of these days, I'll go see first hand. Until then, preview Fuel Magazine Issue #7 here: Buy Australian Hot Rod Magazine: Fuel Have you seen Fuel before? Let us know what you...

Cool Hot Rods from 2011 York NSRA Nationals Car Show More than 3500 hot rods and customs registered for the 38th Street Rod Nationals East. You must be doing something right to be able to say this is the 38th time you have hosted an event and the 2011 event wasn’t any different. The city of York, PA has been lucky enough to be the location of this massive gathering for 31 of those 38 years. It has only been a few years since the National Street Rod Association (NSRA) relaxed the age restriction for vehicles entering the show grounds. Now, you can find more vehicles than just street rods, as long as they are 20 years old or older, driving around the event fields. Some of the best rides the East Coast has to offer attend this show annually. Right when we walked through the spectators’ gate I was greeted with one of my favorite paint schemes. There is just something about gloss flames on a flat black finish that appeals to me. Paul Kain’s 1948 Ford was done exactly the way I like it. Would you believe...

What's New for the 2011 LA Roadster Show Looking for show coverage for 2011? Try these links! First Pictures from 2011 LA Roadster Show Shiny and Finished – Inside the 2011 LA Roadster Show SoCal Pomona’s Open House – Nothing to See Here There's few shows not to miss. One of them is the LA Roadster Show in Pomona, CA. This is the 47th car show for the Los Angeles Roadsters Car Club and this year's Father's Day Weekend,  June 18th-19th. If you're planning to attend, you should know about a major layout changes so you don't get lost on the way in. Spectators: The biggest change is for spectators. This year, you'll be parking in the Blue Lot off White Avenue through Gate #9. If you've ever been to the Grand National Roadster Show, it's the same for that show. There's a bus/trolley available to help you get back and forth, or you can make the short walk through the tunnel. It's a long walk from the parking lot and the Roadster Show Parking/Vendors area over to Specialty Parking and the Swap Meet so make sure you jump...

The Oregon Rally and an Intro to Rallying At the beginning of the automotive era, all auto races were rallies – dedicated race tracks simply didn’t exist, and paved roads were rare outside of cities. So the only way to race cars was to start at Point A and race to Point B. That’s what they did in 1894 – the challenge was to get yourself and your car from Paris to Rouen – a distance of some 79 miles. The winning car made it in 6 hours and 48 minutes – 3 hours and 30 minutes ahead of second place.  That made the average speed about 11 miles per hour. But there it was – an auto race that used unpaved roads to get from one place to another.  Almost 117 years later, the Oregon Trail Rally happened May 13-15 weekend at Portland International Raceway and on roads up in the Columbia Gorge near The Dalles.  The cars are a little bit faster, but the fundamentals of the race are the same – get your car, driver, and navigator from one place to another as fast as you...

Mesa, Arizona Cruise Night Permanently Canceled - The Real Story If you'd never been, you were missing out! And now it's too late. Rather than sit and park, Lance Baker from HotRodPlanet.com, an Arizona show promoter and hot rod enthusiast, restarted a Mesa, Arizona cruising tradition on Main Street. With great weather nearly all the time, it seemed like a sure hit, but it didn't last. With rumors flying as to why the cruise got canceled, Lance decided to set the record straight. So in Lance's words: CRUISIN' ON MAIN STREET IN MESA Contrary to the mutiple and ridiculous rumors that are floating around, here are the facts of why the cruise on Main Street was cancelled - at least from the vantage point of Hot Rod Planet: From the November fund raiser event we did for the Mesa PD Honor Guard - NO - the moron on the motorcycle that did a wheelie in front of the crowd, crashing, and then hitting the young girl sitting on the curb - DID NOT RESULT in any lawsuits towards our organization. The young girl was fine in the end and...

Paint Review - Phoenix Custom Paint Shop to Avoid! You're not looking at an artistic interpretation of the state of West Virginia, you're looking at the terrible paint work by a company in Phoenix, Arizona called "Terrific Paint and Customs". When you start a project, one of the biggest things you need to decide is a budget. Because my four-door, Ford Falcon wagon was never going to be a high-dollar car, no matter what I did to it, I didn't want to spend a fortune on paint. I did want something shiny that I could be proud of, but I knew that getting a great paint job, or "Show Quality" was not in my budget. That's when I started looking for a "driver" quality paint shop.  I found a Craigslist ad and gave the guy a call. He sounded cool enough, knowledgeable, and his ad said, "15 year experience". I sent a bunch of pictures of my Falcon, we talked and sent way too many texts about all the things I wanted to do and he said $1800 and it'd be done in about 3 weeks. (keep that in...

How To Metal Flake Your Car Just because I love grease, doesn't mean that I don't love sparkly things too! Before going to Viva Las Vegas this year, I wanted to add a little bling to my 1955 Studebaker Champion with a metal flake paint job. Studie and I have been through a lot together in the five years I’ve owned and drove her. I’ve become attuned to her original patina’d coral and white paint job. So originally the thought of changing her exterior in any way made me nervous. But the more I thought about adding a subtle sparkle to Studie’s white roof portion, the more I liked the idea. Not knowing the first thing about how to paint, I was lucky to have an expert nearby. Pati Fairchild is the newest member of my car club, the Gasoline Girls. She also happens to be a professional paint and body chick who teaches the subject at El Camino College. After polling friends on Facebook and looking through various paint samples, I paid a visit to Coast Airbrush in Anaheim for my final selection. I went in knowing I wanted...

Vintage Camaros, Mustangs, Chargers and AMC's on the Track MyRideisMe.com doesn't normally publish press releases, but since this is a track near and dear to me, I had to... plus, this just looks like a blast! 2011 Tour Begins with Sonoma Historic Motorsports Festival, Infineon Raceway Los Angeles (May 16, 2011) -  The Big Boys are back June 3-5, 2011, at the Sonoma Historic Motorsports Festival, being held at Infineon Raceway, Sonoma, CA. Bring the entire family for a day of incredible racing with the Historic Trans AM Racing Group. Featuring the original cars, the excitement and the noise you remember from the late ‘60s and early 70s Trans Am series. This exhibition race will bring back memories of the glory days of road racing. The original series drove auto makers to go faster, be louder and better than their competitors. Detroit’s battle cry of “Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday” correctly labeled an escalating new-car marketplace demanding affordable, high-performance automobiles, and the most popular American road racing series of all time. The Trans-Am Series thrilled racing enthusiasts four decades ago and significantly helped to change America’s mainstream automobile...

World Wide Hot Rods and Custom Cars Documentary Dirk Behlau, noted "Kool Lifestyle" photographer and long time friend of MyRideisMe.com (he let us use a picture when we had about 20 visitors a day...) and custom pinstriper and artist Jesper Bram are workin on a worldwide panoramic of hot rods and custom cars along with the people who make the Kustom Kulture. In their words, "Dirk and Jesper will spend a year going from California through Europe and end-up in Japan in search of the coolest Kustom Kulture people and events on the planet. Picking the brains of living legends, up and coming artists and builders within the kustom kulture." The adventure will include some of the worlds best car and motorcycle builders, tattoo artists, pinstripers, custom painters and pin-up models to share their tricks and experience. Have I peaked your interest then?  If so, check out this teaser video: [vimeo]http://vimeo.com/23927615[/vimeo] Then get a closer look at one of Dirk's photo shoots... hey Dirk, where's the pinup model?![vimeo]http://vimeo.com/23954070[/vimeo] Dirk already publish a killer book called "Speed Kings" and we'll be after Jesper for a pinstriping story to see his...