Hop Up Magazine - December 2003

Order it now, and it will arrive on the woven doormat of your cabana before even the stores get it. It's called "Hop Up Volume V - Form and Function" and you should sign up now, for delivery in a few weeks.

Sign over that miserable paycheck you got this week (you DO got a job, no?) And send it to:

Buy a bunch of the things (where you gonna get Christmas gifts as cheap as $12.95?!!!!) AND the Six Pak is still $77.70 (free s&H)

Contents
Contact Us Magazine Info Previous Issues Cool T-Shirts
Book Sales Responsibility Just a Private Party Hate it when that Happens Drip Pan Faux Cal Roadster Show Mort's Shorts

Be assured that this, like all Hop Up Annuals, is the gas. It's the stuff. It's the shit...... next years first and last word. You won't see rerun pics from the old days. No. Not a reprise of pics that the bigs had in their books since it became en vogue. You'll see private archives of cats what CHOSE Hop Up to debut their two hunnert year old personal scrapbooks. You will see the rods and customs of blood. Kin. Da kine....yeah, Buddy....hot rod and custom Daddy-O's like YOU.

HOP UP ANNUALS FOR SALE HERE

A hard bound version of the few remaining books will be offered soon, as will VII, VIII, V IV.

VOLUME II STILL AVAILABLE ( $14.90): ORDER HERE

VOLUME III STILL AVAILABLE $15.30): ORDER HERE

VOLUME IV ON SALE NOW!!($15.95): ORDER HERE

Fourth in the series of Hop Up annuals is now available, shipping this month, in time for your holiday giving. Yeah, you got a job, no?. You got unwashed pals who could use a dose of truth, right? So what's stoppin' ya?!!! Buy the Six Pak Deal (free shipping), give the books away to five of them and watch how it transforms them..............finally we can envision a perfect world.

When ordering:
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The Reprint

The Reprint of the original first 12 monthly issues of Hop Up Magazine (from 1951) is available here (see order form) for $29.90 s&h included. If you don't yet have this one...why not?

COVER

Aaron Von Minden can be counted on to come from Elmo with dirty pictures. Look for a feature on his iron in Hop UP Volume V

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THE FIRST 12 ISSUES

RESPONSIBILITY

You have a responsibility to defend and protect our portion of the hot rod culture against those who misspeak, and who risk corrupting our language. Ya gotta correct those who employ incorrect definitions.

There is an innocent but insidious trend afoot to sway 'traditional' from its proper meaning to the meaning perceived by some folks. It's beginning to look like some cats think that if a car is unpainted it is traditional. But it runs deeper..... and shallower....... than that.

Oldsters or youngsters who know, have got to start correcting faux pax so that our language is not hijacked. That goes for social, political, economic language, too, but here we have our own (hotrod) nomenclature to protect. Because it's what we do, and the meanings have been fairly precise over the years, we notice that ...too many cousins are claiming immediate family ties.

The microcosmic issues are in the misuse of various words. The macrocosmic issue is the misuse of the description of the whole damn thing. Traditional hot rods and customs is getting balled-up by a bunch of folks. Maybe there needs to be a handle for the cool , evolved way of doing things these days, and it is cool, but a hell of a lot of things that are being done are NOT...traditional. The younger guys don't even want to say they do it like we (greybeards) have for a long time so - since ratrod seems to be unpleasant to them -they maybe gotta name themselves.

Example? 1) "Where do I get Cibie lights for my ride?" 2) "Who can help me figger out how to suicide the doors on my Model A roadster?" 3) "Those Duval windshields are cool" ( showing a picture of a Hallock copy) and all the gang chimes in "yeah, here's one that's not really a Duval but it's close" (as if the Hallock was really a Duval)"

JUST A PRIVATE PARTY

Look in our library and you'll see that we have ample exposure to this advanced science including history of most all ends of motorsport. Maybe more than ample. Text and images.

Visit our garage and you'll note that our personal awareness of that science can be certified by hot/streetrods currently owned that are equipped WITH those parts. We have even been 'mocked' for this rare departure from our preference. Believe it.

We were there when the masses started employing them (IFS/IRS) and we opted out, preferring to apply properly set up I beam axles (which have been known to lead certain roadsters around a bend pretty good) ...all along knowing that there is a more evolved way of doing things..... but rejecting that very evolution as a matter of personal choice based on our preference for a point in time - aesthetically and technologically, and knowing that the marginal increased cost, moving parts, and 'throw in' to moderne styles did not afford marginal return in performance and personal satisfaction.

Those advanced suspension choices were and have been made, for the most part, by guys in the 70's and 80's to be...............fashionable.

Few of them ever had a recurring use of their iron (plastic?) in a way that might require hi tech suspension for a performance advantage.

Most all of them drove them to the parking lot show 8 miles away on Saturday nights (and thought they we adding up 10,000/year) and IFS/IRS became one of the first definable gold-chain items there was. It was a status symbol used by guys who did not require it other than to Pay for it, Plate it, Polish it and Point it out.

Then they deigned to rank on guys with axles...developed a prejudice.... against guys who had never said a damn thing, didn't care what they did...and they hooted and pointed and strutted and the magazines agreed with them and..............it (IFS/IRS) became a symbol that DEFINED, for us, anyway, a newby rodder who didn't realize how good traditional setups were, who gave them no credence and initiated the spiritual dichotomy...that is present today.......and that attitude/choice/strut/superiority - along with some base aesthetic choices - separated us traditionalists from them.

Welcome to the scene that we so ingloriously dug for three decades while the world smoothed and billeted and a-armed and condescended and bragged.....and a few good hot rodders quietly did it the traditional way.....which was part and parcel with a refusal to seek approval of people ya didn't even know.

Now, twenty-five years after defining for ourselves what we like for whatever personal reason (maybe just rejecting the arrogance of the newbies who came in and ....educated us......) some folks may wonder why we have prejudice against those car parts.