Who do you rate as a rodding writer

Who is the best writer of our type of car articles? While I rate The Rodders Journal very highly I have of late been keeping an eye open for Street Rodder Premium why? My all time top writer would be the late Tom Senter for his knowledge of cars but also the coverage he gave to traditional rodding icons while building his roadster first with a 27 body and then a 32. He wrote about Ardun heads and Kinmont brakes giving their history and showing how he was fitting them to his build. Also the work of Pat Ganahl, Ken Gross and Spencer Murray who all seem to specalise in a type of car be it early trad, east coast or custom cars. Editors such as Steve Coonan our own Ryan who edits our posts has a bearing but of late Brian Brennan who I have watched grow from being the new kid on the block (like our own Greg Stokes was here in N.Z.) has grown to where he is producing some great stuff both as an editor and a writer his work is contempory but now and then dives back into history producing some great articles on traditional products and cars.

 

You have put together a good list and I agree with all of them. I think Tom Senter was the real deal and a very nice guy, I still miss his wit. I would add some others, Don Francisco, Jim McFarland, Roger Huntington, Frank Oddo, Bill Burnham, and of course Your Old Dad, Mr. Baskerville.

 

Thanks 29AVEE8 forgot about Mr Baskerville

 

yer ol' Dad was may favourite, Pat Ganahl is great and so too is Joe Kress.

 

Pat Ganahl , Gray Baskerville, Bud Byran.

 

Steve Collision (SS&DI editor) and Tony De Foe (white Punk on nitro).

Collision because he regularly and intelligently took on the heavy handed ones at NHRA and stood up for the little guys of drag racing, and DeFoe because his writing makes you feel like you were there (even when you were 13000 miles away at the bottom of the South Pacific).

 

defeo, collision, baskerville ( not traditional but i like greg rager also)

 

I remember talking to Joe Mayall, and telling him his son Louie was doing a good job writing. This was some time ago.
Reminded me of Pat Ganahl's technical article style. Down to earth, and getting the point across.

 

Our own Ryan Cochran is pretty damn good I must say.

 

I haven't read any hot rod magazines in such a long time, that I have to give my props to the likes of Tex Smith and Tom Medley.

 

I would add John Thawley to that list along with the late AB Shuman. Tex, John and McFarland all came out of Texas within a year or two to work for HOT ROD. Even though he was the long time editor of ROAD & TRACK, Dean Batchlor (sp?) wrote the great book, THE AMERICAN HOT ROD. He also was affiliated with SoCal Speed Shop in the late forties..

Based on my experiences in the hot rod magazine business, the best writers were BC or before computers. We supplied typewritten copy to real copy editors through the mail or hand delivered. One had to outline the story, fill it in and present it to the editors. Today, computers let you cut and paste and it shows.

Talk about traditional, I suspect that there are a lot of automotive writers out there today that don't even know what carbon paper is or how to change a typewriter ribbon!

 

All mentioned are great writers..but I would like to add our very own Brad O'Cock to the list. A true gearhead.

 

Looks like most everyone that popped into my head has been covered. You might throw David Vizard in on the tech side of things.

 

One that I would add to the list, although his specialty is the history of the parts that make up the cars we like, is the HAMBs own Jay Fitzhugh.

 

Add in Racer Brown, Barney Navarro...Roger Huntigton was a special case, almost totally incapacitated but kind of the theoretician of 1950's-60's rodding with his engineering background and worldwide research notebooks to catch new happenings.
Our own A-V8...a spectacular roadster building book, eye-popping photography of flathead porting coupled with excellent prose.
His pictures, the mastery of getting clear, sharp pics of labyrinthine port innards, put him over the top. Remember the pics we had in rodding magazines of the past?? Grainy pics with like two pixel dots of the part you wanted to see. In A-V8's stuff you can see the molecular bonds between the iron and the carbon if you look close.

 

All of the above are good. I don't think he had anything published but what he wrote was close to my growing up & rodding around. I had the opportunity to met him once & had plans to visit him again & that was C-9. R I P man.

 

Gray Baskerville, the best and most entertaining read,Tex Smith-is the tech Guru-Both Top shelf writers
Gerry Burger has written some good articles from a Car Guys' perspective.

 

I know both Tex Smith and Steve Coonan and admire what they do.

 

Mine is a short list. Pat Ganahl and Gray Baskerville.

 

All you Thinking HAMBrs. You know who you are.

The ones who start throwing out Ideas/R&D on how to to make a "Column Shifter for a T5", NOT the fuckheads that say, "You can't do that", Nor the fuck who asked for a "Column Shifter for a T5" in the first place.

 

Bob Ryder. Wrote for a number of Peterson mags, then went to Truckin, and currently with Drive magazine. Bob has been a serious car guy all his life. He can work on a car, write about it, and take photos all the while. He does the whole 9-yards, and then some. He drives a 1959 restored Chevy Impala.

 

Tony Defeo--anti establishment counter culture guy

 

Brennan's editorials sometimetimes make me laugh, as did a lot of Burger's in Rodder's Digest. I enjoy articles that are written as a tech piece and not an "advitorial" like som many these days. The guy who has done the "history" pieces like those in the recent past in R&C writes a good feature. I see that Tex is doing another book being an autobiography that is supposed to be out later in the year. I am looking forward to that one.
Michael

 

I have read some of the stuff you have posted here and I think you are a good writer and a good story teller. You need to be expanding your writing beyond the HAMB and just car stuff. Perhaps you are...maybe working on or towards writing fiction and/or non-fiction stories? Do it!

 

I dont know if any of you follow the posts of Michelley here on the H.A.M.B. but I find her work well worth reading as it gives a great vision of early hotrodding and the lifestyle of rodders at that time. It would be great if some of the older rodders here were to give us their experences of the times of themselves and their mates including how the start of the speed parts industry started out of backyards.