History The Great Camgrinder Wars.

Again this is history from HOT ROD magazine.

This part one of a 2 parter has a few photos and a lot of reading material but it is interesting. Never knew about this because it is from before most of us were born LOL. Stay tuned for part 2 at a later date it has more photos.

All photos and captions from here:https://www.hotrod.com/articles/who-started-the-camgrinder-wars-part-1/

Who Started The Camgrinder Wars? part 1

It all started innocently enough with the second issue of Hot Rod (Feb. ’48). For the debut edition a month earlier, Weber Tool Co. was the only camshaft manufacturer that paid (probably up-front) whatever meager amount cofounders Robert E. Petersen and Robert Lindsay asked for advertising space.

Once Volume 1, Number 01 was in circulation, competitors saw Weber’s tiny, 1/15-page ad and climbed aboard. Their headlines were simple and non-confrontational: “Winners Use Iskenderian Cams”; “The Fastest V-8 At SCTA Speed Trials For 1947 Season Used A Weber Cam”; “Bob’s Speed Equipment”; “CRA Track Cars 5 and 66 Use Howard Cams.”

Ten years later, two of these same companies were publicly trading insults, challenges, and charges of phony times in the pages of HRM and especially the independent Drag News. By 1958, what began in SoCal as a regional, eight-page biweekly had evolved into a profitable and powerful weekly, distributed throughout North America.

Moreover, this 1955 brainchild of editor Dean Brown and ad-guy Dick McMullen was one national publication not subject to the editorial and advertising guidelines—some said censorship—imposed upon Petersen Publishing Co. (PPC) magazines by longtime HRM editor and editorial director Wally Parks.

Drag News enjoyed additional advantages of frequency and immediacy, hitting newsstands with comparatively unbiased race coverage and related “hero” ads within three days of Sunday’s final rounds. The same events would not appear in Hot Rod or Car Craft until two months later, if at all, and not without protective filtering from an editorial director moonlighting as NHRA president in Petersen’s building. Forget about coverage of nitro races until 1963, when Parks began dissolving NHRA’s seven-year fuel ban and quit Petersen to run his sanctioning body fulltime.



So, what the heck happened to turn respectful camshaft competitors into the mudslingers responsible for waging the infamous Camgrinder Wars that entertained and enraged Hot Rod and Drag Newsreaders from roughly the late ’50s until the mid ’60s?

All signs point to Ed Iskenderian, though Howard Johansen and Jack Engle both played critical parts in the conflict’s early stages. Exactly when the first shot was fired is less clear. In High Performance: The Culture and Technology of Drag Racing, 1950-1990, author Robert C. Post cites early Howard’s Cams 1956 ads proclaiming customer Red Henslee’s Chrysler-powered modified roadster as “The World’s Fastest-Accelerating Roadster.” Iskenderian Cams one-upped its largest early rival in the Mar. ’56 HRM, anointing Isky-sponsored Jazzy Nelson’s fuel-burning Fiat as “The World’s Fastest-Accelerating Car”—based sketchily on a 9.10-second announced e.t. better than the best blown-fuel dragster’s time (9.12), and not backed up within the then-customary 2 percent expected for record and promotional purposes.

“Isky picked this up and ran with it,” Post wrote. “Did Jazzy Nelson truly turn 9.10 in his little flathead Mouse? Almost certainly not, but Iskenderian had not invented anything out of whole cloth.

To someone with Isky’s foresight and keen intelligence the commercial vistas must have been quite dazzling.” Indeed, this wouldn’t be the last time he turned a questionable time into promotional gold, as illustrated by some of the ads on these pages.






The man himself believes that two other later skirmishes led to all-out warfare. In both battles, Johansen was the opposing field general, again. The first of these ad campaigns began when Isky claimed credit for Emery Cook’s unprecedented, unquestionable 166.97 mph in February 1957 at Lions Drag Strip, heralding a breakthrough, “5-Cycle” cam design.

Howard’s response ridiculed Iskenderian’s 5-Cycle technology with ads illustrating four bicyclists representing the four combustion cycles, followed by a fifth bike—ridden by a cartoon clown.





In the Sept. ’58 HRM, according to Iskenderian, Johansen got the so-called Gasser Wars going with a hero ad heralding Doug Cook’s defection from Iskenderian products. “After that, we started to play up any little success we had,” Isky explained to your author in a series of 1994 interviews with surviving generals of the Camgrinder Wars. “I guess that put a thorn into some of the other guys, and we started to fight back and forth.”

It was Jack Engle who added a third major front to the Camgrinder Wars, creating ads faithful to the humorous spirit established by his two larger enemies.

Engle Cams always had plenty of national heroes to boast about, especially among the rising gasser stars who influenced speed-equipment purchases by little guys on the street and strip. Unlike Isky and Johansen, whose presentations typically included professional graphics and company logos, Engle’s plain layouts were often delivered in type only, supposedly written by whatever individual star customers signed them.

However, their suspiciously consistent, satirical writing style and invariable references to Engle, the cam company, all pointed to the hidden hand of Engle, the camgrinder.



In our 1994 interview, Engle said, “There was some hostility, but I would say the intent was competitive in nature. We were fiercely competitive. If our guys won, we’d come out and say our cam obviously was better; the next week, their guys would win, and it’d be the same thing back.

And everybody would wait for Drag News to come out and see what we’d talk about [in upcoming ads]. Although we never discussed the ads amongst ourselves, or agreed to anything—there was no collusion—we all realized, ‘Hey, this little thing is giving us a lot of exposure!’ So we kept on with it. As far as I was concerned, it was more or less a game.”

Not everyone got the joke. We older HRM and Drag News readers can be forgiven for believing that these guys were serious. Even Ed Iskenderian was fooled. In 1994, he revealed that the closest he ever came to Howard Johnansen was at the latter’s funeral, six years earlier. “I always thought he was mad at us,” Iskenderian explained.

“Otherwise, I would’ve liked to have gone over and visited, because he was a pretty sharp guy. After he died, I went to the service at his ranch and the fellows all told me, ‘Oh, no, Isky; Howard used to get a kick out of reading your ads!'”



None of the dozen or so camgrinders advertising in 1956-64 could’ve imagined that we’d still be getting a kick out of words hastily typewritten by their ghost writers for printing on cheap paper in monthly or weekly periodicals that would presumably become disposable as soon as the next issue arrived.

Presented for your pleasure, half a century later, are as many early examples of this extinct form as we could possibly squeeze into the allotted pages (there will be a part 2 in the January issue), somewhat legibly (magnifying glass recommended). Many, many more of them appeared in the 100-plus faded HRMs and hundreds of crumbling Drag News skimmed during this article’s research stage.

That process has been as sobering as it’s been entertaining. Drag racing’s golden age was also the pinnacle of drag racing publications. The past really was “A/Gas.” Proof appears on every page of every issue.

We won’t be seeing such provocative advertising in this modern, digitized, litigious, politically correct world, but we can follow the Camgrinder Wars just as the readers of 1956-64 did—thanks, again, to the miracle of print publishing.



Part 2 coming up at a later date.

 

When we were doing Crower ads, we had templates on file at DRAG NEWS and NATIONAL DRAGSTER (NHRA). If one of the Crower equipped cars won a big meet, we'd get a call Sunday night with the results. Using the templates and photos supplied by the publication, we'd create a headline and body copy and FAX it in first thing Monday morning. Did the same thing for Jardine on funny cars.