By now most of you should have noticed some of the changes we have been putting forward the last year or so. From the letters and e-mails I've received, it sounds like you have and like what you've seen. Art Director Aaron Kahan has been doing a great job putting an artistic design to the photos and words we give him and has given the magazine an updated yet traditional look. Now that we have that department moving in the right direction, we started looking at what else might need to be tweaked.
One area I felt we could do a better job with was answering some of the tech questions we get on a regular basis. We try to answer as many as time will allow, but most of those responses are just sent back to the person asking the question. I started thinking we needed to share some of the better ones with more of the readers because, just as in school, there's no such thing as a stupid question since you might be surprised at how many others had the same one but were too afraid to ask.
With this in mind, we have added a new column called "Wrenchin'" to give our not-so-new-anymore tech editor, Kev Elliott, something else to do with some of his free time. If you have a question, you can reach Kev at kevin.elliott@sourceinterlink.com, or by sending him a letter to R&C Wrenchin', 774 S. Placentia Ave., Placentia, CA 92870.
Another way I figured we could help some of you was by trying to get a line of communication going with some of the owners of the cars we feature. Generally we have to act as go-betweens every month after an issue comes out when someone wants more info about a particular car similar to the one they're building at home. When possible, and with the permission of the car owners (or builders), we will now be including an e-mail address in the spec box of the feature. Don't expect this with every feature, as some people either don't have e-mail or don't want to give it out to the world. But I'm hoping we'll have more people willing to participate as things move forward, as we all love talking about our cars after spending all the time getting it on the road. There's a lot to be gained by this kind of interaction.
While on the subject of instant gratification and the Internet, we're still working to tailor our own Web site (www.rodandcustommagazine.com) to meet our readers' needs as best we can. We'll continue to post the extra photos from events we just don't have room for in the magazine. In some cases, we don't even have room for some of the events themselves, so we will put some of this coverage on our site as "Web Exclusives."
In the same need-it-now philosophy, we will also be using our blog on the site more to keep you informed as to what we have coming up, not only in the magazine but for events such as our cruise to Bonneville this year. We'll still have updates right here in the magazine, but we can beat the threemonth ag by getting it out on one of our blogs as soon as we have details.
Personally, I don't think my life is interesting enough to do multiple blog entries every week, unless everyone wants to hear about my contractor issues and house remodeling problems as I try to fit in some time working on a car. To save you all from that, I'll be taking suggestions or even some material you might want to share with a little larger audience than your own group of car buddies. So, if you've got a local cruise you enjoy going to and want to send us a few decent photos and a brief write-up, or maybe even some photos of your own car and buildup, we'll see what we can share with the world.