Hot Rod Deluxe: Back. Me: Out. You: In?

Crazy and shocking. Freiburger, I look forward to seeing what your next endeavor produces. I'm confident you won't let us down... and good luck to you.

I just hope that Hot Rod, my favorite print mag., will keep the same quality as you have pumped into it the last few years.

Malcolm

 

I decided today to only buy DRAFT.........and it aint about horses........mmmmmm, microbrew!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Bet the editor doesnt publish pics of his whang with knuckle tatts and a pint of Sierra Nevada?!


Sorry to see you leave Dave, the mag was looking good.

 

would rather see you at the reins than anyone else. you have always been a guiding light. good luck.

 

I wish I could write as well as you do Ryan...

-Juan

 

Yeah! What you said!

 

the reissue of HRD is great .all period stuff ..pre 67 at best .when cars were cars ...i loved the first two ..i remember reading them over and over in the cold rainy winters in north texas ..

hell hot rod has all the arcive why shouldn't they cash in on it .they were the ones to publish mags in the late 40's .they published and captured the real hot rods .

i'm glade it's back .it will be a tried and true hot rod mag .

as far as the hamb having more readers then the mags that were stated .that might be true .but,not everyone has heard of the hamb ..AS OF YET !!i spread the word as much as possible .i will say the hamb has had as much of an impact on hot rodding as the early mags ..but you for sure can't look up the first couple months of the hamb...or can you ?

 

You can access the early days of the HAMB at the "Archive" link at the bottom of each page. Here's the earliest thread I could find, circa Feb 12, 2003:
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-7.html
Look here:
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/archive/index.php/f-5.html

....don't know if that is in fact the earliest HAMB material, but the earliest I could find.

How ironic is it that the title of the thread is "Magazines". Wow.

Malcolm

 

Not the earliest material.

Wish we had a snapshot of the threads and content from the insidetheweb days when there were 50 or so of us on here bench racing. I miss classic Germ.

 

Unfortunately I remember that. I think piercings were involved too.

 

Alot of us complain about this and that but in the end what ever the magazine giant's do it's all about money. Thing is, we don't have to spend our hard earned money on some magazine with "rat rodz" and guys in mohawks.

Magazines are great, but we have the best magazine right here. And it's free.

The only bad thing about the Hamb is that you can't take it tothe crapper with you. Well, I guess you could if you have a laptop........

Thank you Ryan for giving us this place and thank you EVERONE for making this place interesting.

 

My bad. I don't know what I was thinking - I even remember looking at the HAMB/JJ back in 2001..... I must have been smoking crack earlier this morning!

Malcolm

 

Remember this?

http://web.archive.org/web/19990302050717/www.jalopyjournal.com/mainmenu.htm

 

Nice new i.d., James. I like it.

 

Skratch, thanks for the help on that thing. Sorry the photo shoot turned into a nightmare.

DF

 

I found the first issue of Hot Rod Deluxe in Calais Maine.. I was on vacation and didn't expect to find something like that at a rinky dink bookstore in the boonies. I was broke at the time but scrounged enough to buy it and took it back to camp. I still have it.. the cover is tucked inside.. fell off after months of looking and relooking. The magazine made the connection for a person my age.. I'm 40 now. I grew up looking at the little books left behind my my uncles.. The scene was pretty thin by the time I got into cars.. Hot Rod Deluxe was the first sign to me that the scene was still alive and reborn with a new generation of guys.. my age and younger. Why not build a traditional car. Instead of a billet rod.. back to the basics.. scrounge up the parts and build it yourself like the guys before. New twists on time tested ideas.. but with the undercurrent of true do it yourself americana.. It didn't seem influenced by advertising. There were tech articles that I could attempt myself with out alot of $ that weren't thinly veiled advertisments for sponsors. I was depressed when whatever happened to Laskey happened ..and the mag took a nose dive in quality. But those first issues kindled something that wouldn't die. I also found my way to Jalopy Journal via the original Hot Rod Deluxe site.. I started looking around in my area and found a few guys with traditional cars.. one of them even had a mag from New England.. Magneto. I bought a 51 chevy and built my own car.. all stemming from the first Hot Rod Deluxe. I look forward to seeing the latest. It seems though that the quality mags just don't survive long.. Magneto is another example.. seems dead now. I guess like everything.. business and passion make strange bedfellows. It must be a real trick to not sell out but remain profitable enough to stay in business.

 

Freiburger,

I just wanted to say that I am totally bummed that you left Hot Rod. I have followed you from your Car Craft days and really enjoyed your take on the mags you worked on. I guess I will follow your progress on this new venture.

Good luck, Sean

 

Avoid.....http://www.hotroddeluxe.com/

Pretty much always; " ...you pays your money, you takes your chances... " with all printed magazines. Even the 'Old' ones. I find it best to 'sample' at the news stands before buying these days. Still, http://www.mag-neto.com/ has never let me down.

It seems Mr. Freiburger is actually trying to do someone(s) a favour by offering an opportunity. Am I wrong?

Koops.....

 

I loved Hot Rod DeLuxe, I followed it to Car Kulture Deluxe when the suits dumped it. When it was sold to Ol' Skool I quit buying it. Just wasn't the same. TRK has since replaced this spot in my mag rack. What's the skinny on Mr. Lasky? I get the feeling some of you guys aren't huge fans of him. Did I miss something? I thought the mags under him were great. Is there more to this story?

 

Funny how things have changed for 'ol Freiburger....Let's go back to around '97 when I brought a hammered '55 ford 2 door wagon with purple flat paint and watson scallops, on '50 Kaiser caps and whitewalls with almost no interior to the "HOT ROD POWER TOUR" in St. Louis MO of all places. They almost didn't let me in with that P.O.S! The only way you could get any magazine editor's attention at that time was with some prostreet mess covered in graphics, a tweed interior and that had engine parts that looked like legos stacked on each other sticking out of the hood. Chrome and billet was everywhere.
I even remember some of the mag guys walking around the infield and when they passed my wagon they all laughed and said "What the hell is that?" I was sad then and knew that this nod towards traditional style would someday come from underground and make it to mainstream. So I kept my wagon and stuck it out.

Then, I saw the article about the CHOPPERS club in HOT ROD! Then, I got introduced to the internet. I found others like me. I thought to myself...FINALLY SOMEONE IS LISTENING!!!!!
Since then it has been an upward climb to finally becoming mainstream and ok to show a flat/primered ride in a mag. There were flat painted rides at SEMA for the last few years god sakes! Who-da thunk!
I just wanted to take the time and thank all of the magazine editors, photographers, writers, internet web board contributers and others that stuck it out to make this niche of the hobby what it is today and for letting all of us "come out of the RUSTY closet" and be proud of what we love!

THANK YOU!

 

Now you've done it......gonna give ol' Ryan a big head......

If he hadn't started this deal, someone else would have......just as with anything else........it's human nature....

 

Guess it's a good thing I wasn't at Power Tour in 1997.

DF

 

Wasn't the first run of HRD all about the cars/music/tattoos?

 

Amen to that.

 

I will look for HRD nexttime I'm in the store. Hope it's likee it was in the past. If so, I will probably subscribe.

I like the traditional rods in some of the current mags, but the other bullshit content turns me off.

#1 - It's about the cars
#2 - It's about the cars
#3 - It's about a few hot chicks here and there
#4 - It's about the cars

I don't care about...
rolled up cuffs
pompadores
tatto's
the music
or the "lifestyle"

None of that is my thing, but I love the cars.

 

Skratch brought over a copy he got in Vegas..I got to say its really damm good...just like the old one.

Nice.

 

Well, I picked it up today at a local newstand. I have to say I really like it alot! Definitely better than alot of the crap thats out there now. Good articals and some great old pictures. Different than the first two original issues but along the same lines for sure. I only hope it continues to be as good and the suits don't fuck it up again!

 

I just think that it's a little sad.. the only time Primedia/Dan Halen Drywall/Intercom Inc. or whoever they are this week ever cares about content is just before they sell off. They hire somebody that knows their stuff to come in and shake things up, get the subs sold, and then they yank the rug out from underneath to save a few bucks and what attracted the readers slowly fades. Editors bounce from trucks to kit cars to hot rods to bikes on a month's notice.

Folks used to stick around for more than a fiscal year and usually enjoyed their subject matter. Bike guys worked for the bike mags, truck guys on the trucks, and so forth... they earned their spots and had a following of sorts... (Can you honestly picture Baskerville covering 4x4 trucks and sport compacts? It was awkward enough when he had to talk about the vans...) Now they move your desk and you have to quickly research a whole new genre that you don't have a passion for, and try and pitch stuff to folks who REALLY know their nuts and bolts....

The two other "tester" issues of HRD were basically canned due to a lack of a bottom line and an inability to appease the new bean counters when the company was sold.

NOW... now that Rod & Custom and Street Rodder are chucking nostalgia stuff left and right and the advertisers are in place, now they want to play ball and get their piece of the pie they didn't want to help cook in the beginning. Sure they lit the fire, in a sense, but they left it for dead...

I'm sure it's a great mag, everything Freiburger touches turns to gold cause he has passion and is a "hands on" guy, and that's why they shuffled him around like the cleaner in Pulp Fiction to fluff the pig before it goes to market... and I'm sure their distribution power will push it into every nook and crannie of America and it'll do well, but it's a little souless to me for them to jump on the train after it's up to speed.
Ah... but what do I know?

Will I still buy it? Yes, I'm a car guy.

 

YES.....

 

HEMI....you have been watchn' too much Squidbillies!
Early would be dag blame proud!

 

...talk about putting the reader first. The HAMB is almost entirely made up of stuff written for readers by the readers. It's self-sustaining, and self-agregating, and Google's spidered so much of it that HAMB content will pop up in searches just about forever now.

Print mags will never be dead, but this is the future. You've proved it... and with no ads!

~Jason