MAGAZINE

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THE NEW ONE - YUP - WE DONE IT AGAIN

HOP UP 2002 - VOLUME III

Oh, yeah. it's shipping in a couple weeks, so we want you to be the first - the first in your neighborhood - to see and read................ veritas 2002.

Yeah, Baby.

It's the annual report on traditional hot rod and custom innovation (not invention); it's the gut, the vibe, the style showcased by our people nation and world wide.

The cover is innovative yet again - a Weesner illustration - and - if you are da kine hot rod daddy; if you are cool-livin' and unfettered with fraud-rod doin's; if you want to see what the other Truehearts in the culture are up to.............send the scratch, Man...................you prob'ly still got a job........

AND, you will want to also order the reprint.

THE WHAT?!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, the humanity! We (and MBI) have reprinted the first 12 issues of Hop Up. Yeah, like Hot Rod Mag did. But this is "HOP UP" For a lousy $24.95 you will have the original tome, the basis of comparison, the marked-in-time, dead-nuts best review of what was (is) meaningful in the day. And it won't cost $10-20 per mag like it is on e Bay or at swap meets.

Not since Montgomery's books came out has there been anything more vital to your library. It's where truth originated. Not exactly the 'Tablets of Stone' but pretty fairly well important to the coolest, realist, most-happening Daddies out there on the pike..........

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THE FIRST 12 ISSUES

******Note that American Auto Mags handles worldwide orders (Europe, Oz, etc.) and Canadian Orders should go directly to Motorbooks.

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VOLUME II STILL AVAILABLE

MORE VOLUME III

Oh, That. Well, we couldn’t seem to get it to the printer and now that it is there it will be done.... and ship........... in a few days. Really. In the post on March 9.

If you have any concerns about your pre-order, just e mail us. It’s gonna be OK.

MORE REPRINT

We won’t descend to hyperbole. Oh, yes we will. The Reprint is here and early orders have shipped so most of you have seen them. This is without a doubt THE BEST REPRINT..... EVER!!!!!! Yeah..even better than the other one that went drag racing.

Taken in hand, this book captures the whole of classic rod and custom aesthetic; it is the Textbook....R ’n C 101. It is imminently handier than 12 original books, bound in a 1" thick brick of cool. If you ever wanted to have a reference...a touchstone........a foundation for what we do.....buy this book. In this concise format we can readily see how good Hop Up really was. It is further challenging to see what standard was set long ago and to which we must strive today...............

TURLOCK

The Turlock Swap Meet is social as much as material. Witness the comments you read on the HAMB or elsewhere. We, of course, have our own self-realization there. The lesson being..if you want to be around real car guys, go to a hard core swap meet. The kind where they don’t sell fuzzy dice. The ones where there’s no preferred parking. The kind where the hosts don’t expect non-car guys to bring the family in for cheap entertainment, and the kind where the whole setting has an oxidized look, replete with the inclement weather that screens out the unwashed. Just like Bonneville was before guys found out you could get your car in a magazine if it showed up on the salt. That got more of them there than the racing. Guaranteed, if they started running pictures in the magazines of so an’ so’s car in the rain at Turlock, there’d be lots more ’rods’ there! (Hey Sam! You may be the poster boy for a brand new Rod Stop!!!)

It’s like camping-for-dollars. Really. Everywhere you look you see a bunch of hairy legged buddies sitting around some kind of heat, laughing their asses off, breaking the noon rule; their lovely wives are home.....along with decorum, quiet reflection, workday stress, lawnmowers and razors. They are in the company of guys, some of whom they literally only see at the swap meet (we’ve met people there who we have never seen anywhere else, but see there every year). And, to be redundant again, the weather is likely to be crappy and you’ll know that the others there are as hard core as you so you have some kind of affinity for them. ‘Doesn’t mean you won’t require full retail for that rare manifold you brought along. .......

It’s one of the few places you can still go and field a scowl along with ‘it’s not goin’ on a hot rod, is it?’. After all, it is put on by the Model A Club. (We got a real cross look when we told the guy selling nice spring spreaders that we’d like to see an attachment that would work on reversed spring eyes!)

The venue has an impact on it; it’s like someone extrapolated lines from the heaviest concentrations of fraud rodders in California and the furthest point at which they could intersect within California was Turlock. Something less than a time warp, it is sacred and remote from the hand-wringing, plotting socialites that will show up everywhere when the Rod Stop season starts in a few weeks. That’ll take the fun out of it!

It’s a good thing only 19 people read this mess or the rest of them would be competing with us for swap meet hotel rooms......making room for them nouveau street rodders they have in tow, no?

That’s just what we need at a rust fest: street rod dilettantes...... and their mentors....... ......spreading "I" disease.

Do you talk about hot rods at your hot rod club meeting? Oh. Then it must be a lodge, huh? Like with them funny hats and tassles? Yeah, that’s fuuuuuun........

Is the entire instrumental background of Eleanor Rigby...strings? Gawd. Who arranged that? Did the cat get credit for it? Did one of the Fab Four do it? Naw. We’re not fans but once in a while you really listen to a piece of music you hear on the radio.....like on a six hour trek to a Swap Meet.

That one doesn’t even need the vocals.

Hardtop racing is getting kicked off by some of our cunow up North. Cool. We think there is a Mildtop Racing Team being thinked-off; just want to know if this is going to get in the way of the four banger effort in the currently-big-block roadster? If he abandons that idea, we wonder if he is going to forget to paint it the secret color only HOP UP knows...?

100 MPH CLUB

Hop Up, on the other hand, is focused (if you can call it that?) and will continue to morph the Hop Up Cragar (don’t worry: nothing cosmetic) into the Hop Up Flat Four. Did you know that our entry number is #1243?

Think about it.

We ARE going to sponsor the Hop Up 100 MPH Club, where anyone who goes 100 on Elmo or Bonnie with a Vintage Ford Flathead Four will ‘get the T Shirt’ and will have the right to ‘buy the jacket’. It wouldn’t be right if Hop Up hadn’t done it early on, so we’re beginning the project now. There’s a name engine sponsor out there whose motor won’t be ready this year, but we’ll take the tweaked car - with Cragar - to the Hillclimb in River City (in July).

Y’all come.

TV AND KEVEN WILL THROW THIS ONE IN TO THE FRAY

Who, exactly, do you think that Islamic Terrorists will recruit HERE to do their mischief, since they think Middle Eastern-looking folks are being watched/scrutinized-profiled? Maybe someone with their own pseudo-religious and other-justified hatred ......but who moves less-noticed among us? Ohhhhhhh. THOSE guys...............

EARLY TIMES MID-WINTER ROD RUN

Well. You meet up, pay nothing, go far away in your hot rod along with a bunch of other cars, there’s no speeches, no vendors, the destination is cute .........but it’s really just a dot on the map where you flip-a-u, you head back when you please in bursts of two or three cars....or one.......? We did, and after munching with R-Squared and Connie (thanks) we blasted over to the lake for MORE food and....beverage........there was four cars in our bunch.... then back over the scenic highway and dropped in to paradise...spent a while in a 100 year old saloon ....knocked back just enough (moderation, ya know) went home, parked the 70 year old scrapper and ......let’s see...100 miles in it Thursday.......100 miles Friday......100 miles Saturday............120 miles or so on Sunday...that lil’ P.O.S. must be a daily driver!

The cars at the run are mostly traditional rods, some mild customs and... they would be great fodder for a magazine, but the reporters must’ve all shot their wads the weekend before reporting on the latest Monochromatic/Pastel/ Fat Fendered/Saluting Hood Convention.

Wonder how many really cool nouveau/purists were down there trying to contrast with the Pastel Parkers, but then missed the one we were at? Just wonderin’. Someone’s Dad flipped a T Bucket on our tour (broken spring perch) and, thankfully, was unhurt. Gee. It really is safer to stay in the parking lot shows. Lotsa saluting hoods, huh? Naaaaaaaaw.

Oh. And did they pay to get in?

Oh.

Who got the money?

Oh.

Who provided the entertainmant?

Oh.

Who was the ‘host club’?

Oh.

What kinda cars do they run?

Oh.

Bring cameras and they will come...no?

(Did we tell you that the Early Times guys talk about cars at their meeting?)

BIG THREE

Well, yes, the perfect 24 hours. Drove an old car - you know.......the kind that’s a little loud and was not meant to have a 25 year later motor in it, and was never originally drawn to have holes all over its’ hood and all. The kind that you lean your head down and look thru your eyelids to see out of it? The kind that makes you feel just right.....and drove it to preview a big swap meet where there is only a little bit of fuzzy dice and where the Boys said there is lots less of the stuff that matters to us, but.........they were there.

PIG-SNOUT ‘38-39 TRUCK ON DUALLY CHASSIS IS A NICE PIECE

Then drove up a countrified highway into a foothill area in balmy late-afternoon warmth and dug the ride and listened to the motor and thought about the tires on the pavement and listened to the exhaust note and thought about uncorking the cutouts and savored everything we and a handful of pals had done to make this such a civilized ride (in a coarse, Hop Up kind of way!) and pulled in to a beautiful property at the end of whose driveway was a couple of the coolest hot rods we know of...and about 6 of the cats responsible for such cars were up there...and.... a jug of whiskey.

SEVERAL YEARS AGO ONE GUY JUST WOULDN’T LEAVE.......

Couple more guys show up and we pretty much sat back, threw back likker and laughed. Hop Up Guys can sure tell stories about cars. And if you are invited in to that inner-sanctum of people who are likely to communicate with a glance - born of years of sharing commonality of purpose - you are a lucky guy. That was us.

Then dinner and more stories - seemed to have a hot rod theme, they did - and lay over for a 5:15 wake up and ultimately an 8 mile walk among the people and parts and cars that we would rather have been amongst than, well..........it was pretty much a first choice kinda deal.

Award for most poignant comment of the day: when one guy drug his feet, slowed down, and looked sideways at a ‘project’ for sale on a trailer, the mug walking next to him did not even look at the subject...but said...."just keep walkin‘........"

Thanks for the advice.

You guys know who you are. Thank you.