Leslie Long was one of the earliest Southern California hot rodders (before hot rodders were willing to embrace the term) and was a regular at the dry lakes in the days before World War II. Recent conversations with Leslie were the basis for the article "The Guys Who Invented Hot Rods," which ran in this magazine in May 2009.inline_mediumwraptextright29728797/thehistoryof/0911rc_drag_racing_originsrodp_0911_18+drag_racing_origins+racing_ad.jpgTrue

Tihsepa
"All the foreign cars had all those fancy names: Testarossa, Scuderia Ferrari (Ferrari Stable) and so on. So I added Tihsepa to the Eliminator name when I dropped in the Chevy. I never told them what it stood for. It blew me away; it took them about three months to figure it out. I hear through the grapevine they were going over the entry blanks when they got to Tihsepa and the guy figured out what it meant by spelling it backwards. I had to remove the Tihsepa part. Now there's a Tihsepa kart club."

After returning to the U.S. in 1971, Pete introduced a variation on Drag Cartoons called Drag Comics, printed in a color newspaper format. He became a successful illustrator and model builder for court trials, where his drawings and models were used to demonstrate traffic and industrial accidents.

In the very early 1950s a proverbial tree fell, but today almost nobody remembers hearing it. It certainly wasn't due to mediocrity; with its scratch-built tube chassis, handformed alloy body, and domestic V-8 grunt, the Astra Coupe is a true handbuilt sports car/hot rod hybrid cast in the same mold--or is that beaten over the same buck?--as Briggs Cunningham's legendary race cars from the same era.

Southern California's dry lake beds have attracted racers since the turn of the 20th century, but things really exploded in the Thirties. More than 70 years later, hot rodders are still fascinated by this period and this place. Luckily, a lot of the racers are still going strong.

In 1948 Bill Waddill helped form a local hot rod club partially named for Genesee County where it was based. The balance of the name may have been influenced by an existing organization, the Gear Grinders of Bell, California, a member club in the Southern California Timing Association.

We all enjoy stories from what seem like the glory days of hot rodding and we recently received a book filled with some great stories told by the guys that were there. In many cases the accompanying photos could tell a story themselves and do a great job helping illustrate the tales. The best part is that the clubs represented are very diverse and tell the stories of hot rodders across the nation and not just on one coast. If you enjoy the following story (and I'm sure you will) you can order the book, Car Club Memories - Personal Stories from Three Dynamic Decades of Cruisin', Competition, and Cool Cars. Fred Thomas spent years collecting the stories and photos and has assembled some of the best into this book available online at barnesandnoble.com, amazon.com, and authorhouse.com. Local bookstores can search by title, author, ISBN: 978-1-4343-6251-3 (sc), or LCCN 2007908240. The $15.95 book has 116 pages and165 vintage black and white photos to add to your reading enjoyment.

In Rod & Custom's 50-year span, only nine motor-oil-for-blood fanatics have sat behind the editor's desk. As the second, Lynn Wineland had few traditions to work from, but Lynn, an artist, a writer, and a rodder, had all the makings for the job.

Pete Eastwood lived a mere hubcap toss away from the goings on at Blair's Speed Shop and eventually punched a time card there along with the "who's who" of hot rodding.

Simon and Garfunkel's song "Mrs. Robinson," posed the rhetorical question, "Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?" Miffed, Joltin' Joe would often tell his close friends, "I haven't gone anywhere, I'm still here."

Blackie Gejeian (ga-gee-an) has been traveling the country looking for the crme de la crme for his show held in March since he began in 1958. The man in black personally chooses and invites each and every owner/vehicle to his show in Fresno. It's not just organized, promoted, and run by Blackie-?it is Blackie. And, he keeps it simple; just two primary coveted awards are personally handed out by Blackie: Best Rod and Best Custom.

"God Bless the Flat Heads!" said the back window on Alex Xydias' pickup. It was the 1952 Bonneville Nationals, and the writing was on more than just SO-CAL Speed Shop's shop truck: the overheads, as the Cadillacs, Oldsmobiles, and Chryslers portended, would soon surpass Henry's valve-in-block pioneer as the default race engine. That very week Ray Brown and Mal Hooper's Hemi-powered belly tank struck the first blow at the Flathead by taking the SO-CAL team's freshly minted C-class record. According to Dean Batchelor, whom I graciously admit inspired this introduction, Bobby Meeks' masterpiece fought valiantly to the end.

We can't think of anybody who has contributed as much to hot rodding as Wally Parks, who passed away on Friday, September 28.

The NSRA Street Rod Nationals is the granddaddy of events that pulls street rodders together from every corner of the U.S. But did you know that a couple of fishing buddies at R&C kick started the whole shebang?

After attending half a dozen Americruises in Lincoln, Nebraska, I like to think of the city is a second home. I pride myself on being able to make it around town without heading down too many one-way streets, remembering which nights they having cruising at Sonic or Culver's, and knowing a few members of the Rebels car club on a first-name basis.

After 35 years of serious collecting, Pat Aust is ready to catch up on a few projects and move a few more of his cars into the "completed" category. As a second-generation Southern California native hot rodder, Pat was messing with cars well before receiving his driver's license, and luckily for him, he's been able to hang on to a majority of those four-wheeled fascinations. Back in the '60s, Pat started off with a 1953 Ford Country Squire station wagon that he fixed up and eventually sold to purchase a pristine 1956 Chevy Bel Air hardtop. The '56 was given the treatment of the day with new paint, leather interior, and chrome reversed wheels. That ride lasted until the end of high school, but soon a family and civil servant career took center stage.

It wouldn't be accurate to call Keith Weesner an automotive artist. He's an artist. Sure, you can see his work in hot rodding magazines and on the chests of any fan who has purchased one of his T-shirts at a hot rod get-together--but you can also see it hanging on the walls of fancy galleries, where patrons of the arts, who may have never been to a rod run, happily shell out serious money for an original Keith Weesner painting. He's a member of the Burbank Choppers, a car club dedicated to building, driving, and promoting traditionally-accurate rods and customs. He's doing a great job of exposing hot rodders to fine art, and exposing the rest of the world to hot rodding. We cornered Keith at a recent outdoor car show and barraged him with some of the questions we'd been saving just for the occasion.

In the elusive search for more horsepower, early pioneers of racing experimented by adding various chemicals to their fuel tanks. For Vic Edelbrock, introduction to a potential power enhancer came from midget driver Ed Haddad. Ed had been given a nitromethane-based fuel sold by a company called the Dooling Brothers of Los Angeles. Manufacturers of aluminum midget slot cars, the Brothers used the fuel to power a 6.1ci single-cylinder engine used in one of their miniature cars. Haddad brought the 1-gallon can of nitro to Edelbrock saying he didn't want any part of it, because it could blow up in your face. Edelbrock thought the threat of explosion was overrated. He had heard about the wonders of nitro and wanted to try it immediately.

There are a bunch of people in the hot rodding and custom car hobby and industry who have become so well-known that we start to think they've been around forever. However, as you're about to see, that is hardly the case. Even big-name builders and collectors had to start somewhere. We wanted to find out where, so we got on the telephone to some of these prominent guys and invited them to do the same thing we've been inviting all of our readers to do--send us some photographs of their car projects from the "old days." What kind of cars were hot rodding's big guns building and driving when they were young guns, before they started drawing the attention of the rest of the world? Here are some of the responses we received. We had so much fun with this that we may decide to get more pros involved in the future.

Roadster racing history is essentially hot rodding history. Long before hot rods were even known by such a term, before they became fad-driven expressions of post-war teen rebellion, roadsters were being stripped down and hopped up for a singular purpose: speed. Competition inevitably followed.

It's the marvel of electronics! You have successfully loaded the R&C URL from the magazine into your browser, and now you're free to peruse the three preview stories. You'll also be able to look back at the cover and the Table of Contents for issues you may have missed. Enjoy!

Did we mention that it was our birthday? R&C's first-ever issue was May 1953, which makes us 50 years old.

By Spencer Murray, Founding Editor

Cover Section: Basic Bodywork & Custom Tricks

Probably no race car in existence has been campaigned as long and as hard as this chopped and channeled ’34 Ford. The men who had a part in this old hot rod’s evolution, preservation, and triumphs, as well as the lives it touched along the way, are unequaled in racing. Undefeated in drag racing and a record holder at Bonneville, Hot Rod magazine dubbed it the “Double-Threat Coupe” way back in 1954.

Like a talent scout who turns a bit player into a movie star, Alex Xydias rescued an also-ran and created a winner—the So-Cal Coupe. The Coupe’s time with Alex and the So-Cal Speed Shop is only part of its history. In part one of this saga, we’ll explore the critical path that led to Alex’s acquisition of the Coupe as well as his experiences with it.

Alex Xydias

As a schoolboy growing up in Hollywood, Alex recalls that he was “a typical hot rod kid. My first car was a roadster, I took auto shop in high school, and I went up to the lakes to watch my heros Vic Edelbrock and Bob Rufi run.” The young spectator was hooked. Alex vowed to return as a competitor someday. During WWII, Alex served as a B-17 engineer. While at home on leave, Alex saw some kids street racing and decided that he wanted to open a speed shop when the war ended. In 1946, Alex opened the So-Cal Speed Shop in Burbank and realized his dream.

By 1948, with his speed shop in full swing, it was time for Alex to turn his other dream into reality—to compete at the lakes. Alex formed a team consisting of Keith Baldwin, Rich French, and Dick Flint. “I wanted something that was a real race car to go with the speed shop. I needed to be in a class where I could be recognized and try to set records,” emphasizes Alex.

The crew began construction of a Class A streamliner in February 1948 using two halves of a P-38 drop (fuel) tank for the body. Power was provided by a 156ci Ford V8-60. During the construction of the car, Vic Edelbrock Sr. showed Alex how to get the most out of the tiny engine, helping the team make a record run of 130.155 mph at El Mirage that August. Alex states, “We set several records at every lakes meet in 1948, even breaking our own records.”

While the belly tank was in the Streamliner class, it obviously didn’t resemble a streamliner. Frankly, it looked like what it was—a fuel tank on wheels.

Open-wheel cars like the belly tank were later placed in the Lakester class. Thus set the stage for a second car that had the look of a true streamliner. The sleek, butter-smooth race car screamed into the record books at the First Bonneville National Speed Trials going 193 mph. Because of its appearance and performance (the more efficient body of the new car made it 30 mph faster than any hot rod before it), Alex’s fully enclosed car generated a new Streamliner class. To compete at the first Bonneville event sanctioned by SCTA in 1949 was, in itself, historical, but to have the top speed of the meet is one of the reasons why Alex is a legend.