Thread: Street Rodder Magazine

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Attaboy Davey!

While on one hand I can sympathize with your point of view Henry, I also have observed that the "home built" perspective hasn't sold. Smith used to publish "Hot Rod Mechanix" and failed. Two other entities tried to revive it, failed too. I suspect that the appeal is too limited, though the adherrents are vocal.

Personally I find a lot of info in all the magazines, just need to keep in mind what their slant is and dig a little. And the reality of the publishing world is that subscription fees don't pay the rent. It's the advertising revenue that hauls the freight.

I guess I would draw a comparison to another interest of mine.......remodeling a house. There are a gang of magazines out there aimed at that market. The formats are a lot like the rod mags. (and don't we see a lot of similarity in the car based TV shows to the remodeling shows that preceded them?) Some may specialize in contemporary styles, others on Victorian, or mid century, or some other variant. The advertisers follow suit and command the greater proportion of pages. All for the same reasons. Like with the car thing, I'm not going to do a kitchen or bathroom exactly the same as the contractor/designer in the mag does, and a lot of them are way out of my budget, but I do get inspiration from them. And the advertisers make me more aware of new technologies to accomplish solutions to old problems. And, just like with cars, the magazines (and TV shows) make everything look easier than it really is.

And if you search hard you can even find guys who advocate building a house with wooden pegs themselves instead of taking the "gold chainer" approach of using those new fangled, high dollar, steel nail/screw things and employing a professional contractor!