The First 50 Years Of R&C

The R&C Street Rod Nationals: Rodding events leapt up the evolutionary ladder in 1970 when Tom Medley and the crew created a national event for street rods. We never expected 600 cars and 1,200 participants to show up in Peoria, Illinois, for the 1st Annual Rod & Custom Street Rod Nationals. This year, 10,000 rods will participate in the Street Rod Nats.

Tom Daniel: Tom Daniel's artwork filled our pages from 1959 and throughout the '60s. Off The Sketchpad articles showed radical reworkings of new factory cars as well as rods and customs. Barris' Surf Woody and Roth's Druid Princess were real customs inspired by Daniel designs, not to mention his most famous custom, the Red Baron, which started out as a Monogram kit.

Vintage Tin: "Confessions of an Incurable Scrounger," one of many great Leroi "Tex" Smith stories, appeared in December 1967. Tex's point that roddin' raw material can be found anywhere drew a huge response and inspired the Vintage Tin department, comprised of readers' photos of beat-up, forgotten iron. Vintage Tin started in May 1968 and ran until R&C went away in 1974.

Rod Tests: Writing feature stories about somebody's rod or custom is fun, but taking a car out and putting it through a torture test is the real way to find out what it's made of. R&C initiated Rod Tests in 1962 and was still doing them into the '70s. This test of Jerry Aaron's '35 Plymouth appeared in the July '70 issue.

Volksrod: Volkswagen-engined rods were not too unusual in the mid-'60s. R&C popularized the idea even more with the Volksrod project: a 'glass T roadster pickup on a specially built frame, powered by a rear-mounted, air-cooled VeeDub. The car was the subject of countless tech stories, and the project lasted for years.

Duel Of Deuces: This was a great story from R&C's brief comeback in 1972. New guy Gray Baskerville put up his '50s-style Deuce roadster against Jerry Kugel's modern IFS version in the August '72 issue. Traditional versus modern was the theme. The debate continues three decades later.

Are Coupes For Chickens?: That question was posed on the cover of the November '73 issue. Inside, we ran a comparison of these two '34s. The yellow car belonged to R&C contributor Jim Jacobs. Pete Chapouris' flamed coupe is the same car that appeared in Garage Scene earlier that year and went on to fame as the California Kid. Jacobs and Chapouris teamed up to start Pete & Jake's.

Garage Scene USA: Garage Scene was sort of an updating of the old From Out of the 48 series from the '50s. The series featured in-progress rods from readers all over the country. In the first installment, we presented this '34 three-window, built by a SoCal guy by the name of Pete Chapouris.

Tire Test: People still tell us how much they loved the "Tire Test" story from September 1973. We took Dennis Varni's '29 roadster and two dozen sets of 60-series Wide Oval tires out to the Ontario Motor Speedway for a little comparing and contrasting, and some beating up on somebody else's rod.

We're Back...Again: After a 14-year absence, R&C was reintroduced in 1988, with Pat Ganahl as editor. The cover of the December '88 "Premier Issue" was a variation on the barnyard scene from the November '73 cover featuring the Pete & Jake's coupes.

The Little Pages: Many readers were hoping that Rod & Custom would come back in its original digest format. It didn't, but one of the features in the new R&C was the Little Pages department, a look back at classic early issues of the magazine, similar to the current R&C Heritage department.

Bell Is Swell: Cartoonist Dave Bell helped us celebrate our return with his monthly illustrations. The first one, published in the December '88 comeback issue, featured a chopped custom Merc and a '33 roadster with a blown Hemi. Bell Is Swell ran from 1988 to 1991.

Bonneville: Competition at Bonneville is part of the genesis of hot rodding, and the salt has flavored the pages of R&C since our earliest days (although we strayed for a while). We returned to Bonneville for the 40th Anniversary of Speedweek and gave our report in December 1988.

L.A. In The '40s: Dean Batchelor, first editor of Hop Up and one of the Quinn Publications crew who helped found R&C, shared his photos and memories of hot rodding in Los Angeles, which were published in December 1989. The kid on the left with the shades is Batchelor in 1947.

A Look Back at Oakland: The first Oakland Roadster show took place in 1949, four years before our time, but Hot Rod Magazine Photographer Eric Rickman was there. Rick gave us some never-before-seen photos, which we published along with coverage of the 40th Anniversary Show in the June '89 R&C.