So I've got Volume 1, Issue 4 of Honk! Magazine. The cover is ripped off, the pages are printed crooked, and all around, it's just in really bad shape. In it, however, is one of my favorite features of all time. The feature covers a '32 roadster that... <BR><BR>To read the rest of this blog entry from The Jalopy Journal, click here.
That is so cool, I don't think my Golden would be so cooperative, unless there was a tennis ball involved. All my copies of HONK are in storage but I don't remember seeing this article thanks for posting. Always nice to start the day with a smile.
See, now, if everyones dogs "acted" like that at shows and cruises I might not take issue with them being there!
That's on my radar and want to pick up that issue for sure. I just bought my first issue of HONK! which happens to be Issue 1 from Muttley so I am excited to take a look. That car is awesome but definitely overshadowed by how rad that dog is. I'd love to take my dogs Mildred and Action Jackson in my Hot Rod someday!!! If I could just get them to ride in the RUmble seat properly hahah!!!
I only ever had one dawg that I could bring to a show. An old Scotty that went about everywhere with me. But he wouldn't pose for shit. All he was really good for was drinking my coffee or yours and locking the doors if I forgot to lock them when I got out of the car. That is a cool old feature even without the dog but the dog just makes it. I really like the engine of choice. You'd never see one built that way today.
Look good at the first picture. I looks like a second dog is looking through the steering wheel column. I know its just a reflection, but looks cool anyway.
The officer writing the ticket was Bud Coons, one of the driving forces behind NHRA. That was Ak Millar's '32 roadster, with the '41 Chev front crossmember and coil springs... Was that Ak and Chub's dog? Can't remember, been 55 years.
That is one of my favorite individual magazines of all time, and not just because of the cover shot! Check out the article on building a full-synchro in all 3 speeds early Ford/LZ transmission article, the related article on the road racing rod (Manning, I think?) and just the sheer coolness of tone in the whole magazine! Honk was a helluva neat magazine in its few issues.
Great car and even better dog! Thanks, Ryan, for a great story. Now I gotta get back to work somehow after laughing and crying for 20 minutes over my own and all lost good dogs everywhere. Here're two great poems about dogs and their masters by former U.S. poet laureate, Billy Collins... first... The Revenant I am the dog you put to sleep, as you like to call the needle of oblivion, come back to tell you this simple thing: I never liked you - not one bit. When I licked your face, I thought of biting off your nose. When I watched you toweling yourself dry, I wanted to leap and unman you with a snap. I resented the way you moved, your lack of animal grace, the way you would sit in a chair and eat, a napkin on your lap, knife in your hand. I would have run away, but I was too weak, a trick you taught me while I was learning to sit and heel, and - greatest of insults - shake hands without a hand. I admit the sight of the leash would excite me but only because it meant I was about to smell things you had never touched. You do not want to believe this, but I have no reason to lie. I hated the car, the rubber toys, disliked your friends and, worse, your relatives. The jingling of my tags drove me mad. You always scratched me in the wrong place. All I ever wanted from you was food and fresh water in my metal bowls. While you slept, I watched you breathe as the moon rose in the sky. It took all my strength not to raise my head and howl. Now I am free of the collar, the yellow raincoat, monogrammed sweater, the absurdity of your lawn, and that is all you need to know about this place except what you already supposed and are glad it did not happen sooner - that everyone here can read and write, the dogs in poetry, the cats and the others in prose. and second... A DOG ON HIS MASTER As young as I look, I am growing older faster than he, seven to one is the ratio they tend to say. Whatever the number, I will pass him one day and take the lead the way I do on our walks in the woods. And if this ever manages to cross his mind, it would be the sweetest shadow I have ever cast on snow or grass.
Love the dog. (How can anybody not love that dog?) The car is mostly great, though that grille shell has me scratching my head in puzzlement. Am I the only one who finds the fat-bottomed grille shell a bit ... well ...distracting? Help a guy to learn something here. A channeled deuce roadster with fenders ... is that a bit of what I have heard called "East Coast" vibe going on there? Or am I misunderstanding the term?
Pomona?? How far east IS that?? Fenders were certainly required in California, the infamous fender law, and this is long before the police started assuming that anyone in a rod or on a Harley was a retired accountant. Might also have been required by the racing body for sports class...this is a race car in some kind of street formula class, and I think some of the other famous racers in the magazines from that period also carried cycle fenders.
Maybe 42 miles from the Pacific by my reckoning, so not very far, but that isn't what I was asking. Um, yeah, but what I am asking about is a thing called "east coast style" rods (I think that's the term) that as I understand it were defined by things like channeling and fenders. What I understand was "west coast style" was the ubiquitous fenderless high-boy. There's nothing that would prevent an east coast style roadster from being built on the west coast, however. I just gather that the east coast style was more common on the east coast, hence the term. Or so I understand it. I'm just asking if I understand that correctly. Maybe I didn't make that clear enough in my previous message. If so, I apologize for the misunderstanding.
I think the point was getting it low. Roadracer thing. Some westerners also channeled them for assumed aerodynamic benefits at lkes or Bonneville, but I believe that became a class dividing point, with only unchanneled cars in roadster, channeled ones bumped to modified roadster and so irrelevant as an advantage. On the street, I think the unchanneled and frequently full fendered roadsters were kept thus for both styling and functional reasons. If you look at eastern hotrods, I think the aesthetic impulse was largely to make the car look modified and to hell with functional considerations! They wanted to look radical, and I think were unfettered by an notion of what was visually attractive in many cases. There were good looking eastern channeled cars, but a great many were built with terrible proportions and interiors that were actually painful. There were also a lot of channeled western cars in the early mags, but usually built with an eye to maintaining proportion and function. Note that in the very functional Balchowski racer, he got a lot of his space back by losing the dashboard!
Not big on the grill, but love the rest of it, especially the no dash idea. Never even thought about that. The dog is cool too of course.
Those old mag covers were great huh? None of that trying to dazzle you with 'offers of discounts' crap or colors that almost blind you in the process.
You mean,dragging their butts on the carpet? hahaha! I agree 100%. Gotta find me that issue of HONK also...
Bruce or Ryan, can you please post a scan of the full-synchro trans article? Sounds very interesting.