HOT RODS, CUSTOMS & DRIVE-INS

Posted on August 10, 2022 by MartynL

Rod & Custom guru and automotive journalist Pat Ganahl has spent his hot-rodding career on the left coast and just posted this short-course on HOT RODS, CUSTOMS & DRIVE-INS. Before social media and cell phones, hot rod and custom car owners communicated with each other at club meetings, shows, drag strips and drive-ins. Drive-ins were where you took your dates and showed off your wheels, finished or unfinished. In some locales, drive-ins were the places to go looking to hook...

NEW-OLD HOT ROD SHOP TOUR

Posted on June 16, 2022June 16, 2022 by MartynL

Hot rod & Custom guru Pat Ganahl takes us on a So-Cal NEW-OLD HOT ROD SHOP TOUR, complete with vintage and modern photos and background information about some of the biggest names in hot-rodding and racing history. I did an article in the fourth issue of The Rodder’s Journal titled The Grand Shop Tour, in which I looked up addresses of the original, pioneering hot rod parts manufacturers in ads in 1948-1950 issues of Hot Rod magazine (all in the greater L.A. area), and then drove to...

1960-1961 ROD & CUSTOM CAR SHOWS

Posted on February 23, 2022 by MartynL

Historian Pat Ganahl shares highlights of 1960-1961 ROD & CUSTOM CAR SHOWS from his extensive historical archives. I’ve got a lot of stuff in my “archive.” I mean a whole lotta stuff. Just in terms of photos–color, black-and-white, prints, negatives, slides, proof sheets, digital–there are 30,000-some images. No way I can count them. It’s just an estimate, and it’s probably way low. But besides those, there are magazines (most from Vol 1, No. 1), books, racing and show programs, audio tapes...

ROD & CUSTOM: ART & THE AUTOMOBILE

Posted on July 26, 2021 by MartynL

https://patganahl.com/2021/07/26/unreal-auto-art/

Rod & custom archivist/historian, Pat Ganahl blogs about Charlie Smith’s ROD & CUSTOM: ART & THE AUTOMOBILE that turns as many heads as do iconic show-stoppers. I was going to title this column “The Unknown Artist,” but that’s not true at all. I’ve known Charlie Smith of Kansas City at least since the mid-1980s. I’ve published his work in Hot Rod and Rod & Custom, and you’ve seen it elsewhere. You’ve also seen cars he’s designed, though you might not know it. Just one example is...

ROD and CUSTOM: MYSTERY MERC!

Posted on April 22, 2021April 22, 2021 by MartynL

Hot Rod Archeologist Pat Ganahl has been tracking a long-lost customized and chopped Mercury with Tinseltown credits, but the trail on the ROD and CUSTOM: MYSTERY MERC! has gone cold. Help anyone? I love a good mystery. Whether written or real life, some are better than others. The thing is, in mystery books, if you can’t solve it along the way, by the end it reveals who done it. In real life, that’s not always the case. Also in real life, as you’re solving one mystery, sometimes other...

ENDANGERED SPECIES: VINTAGE DRAG RACING

Posted on December 19, 2020 by MartynL

Hot rodding historian and ROD and CUSTOM editor Pat Ganahl rants about the sport’s latest ENDANGERED SPECIES: VINTAGE DRAG RACING. Nostalgia drag racing - like the once - revered Antique Nationals - has fallen victim to rules and regs that turn away true vintage hot rods and drag cars. I only did a tiny rant last time. I held most of it in, so to speak. My plan was to let ‘er rip this week. But you know what? We’ve had enough negativity this past year, and I don’t really want to add to ...

THE WAY IT WAS: DANGEROUS DRAGSTERS!

Posted on December 1, 2020December 1, 2020 by MartynL

ROD and CUSTOM’s Pat Ganahl blogs about California drag racing pioneers and THE WAY IT WAS: DANGEROUS DRAGSTERS! Yes, I will admit to having a bit of corncob embedded in a certain portion of my anatomy. Why? I won’t go too deeply into it here. But most of you know that I was an avid and active supporter of Nostalgia Drag Racing from its beginning, participating with a Hemi-powered A/Altered and then a Top Fuel dragster, neither of which I had any desire to drive myself. After a couple of ver...

RETRO RODDING: ROADSTERS RULE!

Posted on September 22, 2020 by MartynL

ROD and CUSTOM’s Pat Ganahl brings back a blast from the past: RETRO RODDING: ROADSTERS RULE! This feature derives from http://carguychronicles.com/hot-rods-customs-cruisin-angelos/ In it, among the many bright-colored photos of then-contemporary 1970s and early-1980s hot rods, I showed these three black roadsters gathered under one light, stating that “…this was just the beginning of the retro-rod movement…” It took a couple of days, but this jogged my memory. It was almost a bad memory, but l...

HOT RODS & CUSTOMS: CRUISIN’ ANGELO’S

Posted on September 10, 2020September 10, 2020 by MartynL

Pat Ganahl digs into his archives and retrieves memories of living in Anaheim in the late-1970s, early-1980s and shooting HOT RODS & CUSTOMS: CRUISIN’ ANGELO’S for So-Cal mags. I think it was one of my Instagram readers who mentioned recently that a photo reminded him of cruising Angelo’s on State College in Anaheim. I hadn’t thought about that in quite a while. But we lived in Anaheim from 1977 to 1984 – in fact son Bill was born there – and Angelo’s was just a little more than a m...

‘OHIO GEORGE’ MONTGOMERY: FIRST DRAG COUPE

Posted on July 28, 2020July 28, 2020 by MartynL

Rod and Custom’s Pat Ganahl blogs about Gasser legend ‘OHIO GEORGE’ MONTGOMERY: FIRST DRAG COUPE. We add a couple of photos of Ohio’s most iconic quarter-mile rides: Malco Willys & Mustang Gassers powered by blown Ford SOHC engines. I am going absolutely bonkers. No, it’s not from being cooped up at home for the past four-plus months. Anna and I are doing very well in that regard, thankfully. Plus I got one car finished in the garage, another to build, and I even finally got some ti...