New Hot Rod Magazine
 

I've had a Hot Rod subscription since I went to college in '72. It was always monthly and maybe 100+ pages. Slowly over the years they combined Car Craft and Pop Hotrodding in and have slowly gotten thinner and thinner. My newest instead of having the month on it had "Summer"! So they have gone quarterly now??

Yes- they announced last fall they were going quarterly.

I dumped my Hot Rod magazine subscription right around 1977, had been a subscriber since I was 11 years old in 1971.

I got so sick of seeing nothing but how to install shag carpeting, screw-on fiberglass fender flares and cutting holes for porthole windows and sunroofs in vans during the van craze that I couldn’t take it anymore. :gag:

No regrets. :)

Chevy, Ford, Mopar, bla bla bla, heavy on Chevy. Pissed me off to get automatically subscribed to hotrod after my subscription to High Performance Pontiac magazine went away. They, the hotrod mags, went straight to the trash.

I have been getting Hot Rod since around 1970. Started and stopped my subscription a few times over 50+ years. Since they went quarterly, about 4 months ago, I just don't like the new format and will let my subscription lapse this time, probably for good. The new format seems to have a main theme each issue. Last quarter is was pro street cars. This quarter pro touring cars. No tech anymore and no old historical articles like they had been doing. Also no historical last page and no 20, 40, 60 years ago in Hot Rod pages. IMO, those were the best features left in the mag. The quarterly issues focus on 4-5 cars each. They are all without exception, super high dollar builds, probably starting around $400,000.00 and moving up from there. Almost always done by the half dozen internet darling builders like Ring Brothers, Hot Rods by Troy, several others. $500,000.00 does buy some nice hardware, nice fabrication, and a great paint job. But the running gear is very, very cookie cutter. A modern Hemi or an LS or LT GM engine. Every now and then a Coyote Ford. Always centrifugal supercharged or turbocharged, and always dressed up to look like an old vintage engine? I just don't get it I guess. I also don't have the kind of money it takes to mingle in those circles. It's just a very different magazine from just a year or so ago.

Not for me. Butt them PAW and JC Whitney catalogs were exciting to read.

I like hot rod as a kid, but the best magazine ever was super stock and drag illustrated under Steve collison.
Steve was a really good guy .
Such amazing useful articles like the giant killer series. They Ran a stock vette and many rental cars in the street bracket classes all over the US and gave all the secrets and tips he learned. I used all these tips and some of my own and used to clean up in street classes. In fact I won 2009 Pontiac day fastest class at Etown. . And runner upped w my RAIV 69 bird , stick car against many autos. A few years before that. It was always a struggle w the RAIV being a stick but many guys in here saw me racing it in the hirth east for years. I also raced a 87 TA in New England and during the winters at Orlando speed world
That car was just about unbeatable in the street classes until I blew the stock trans and never could get it dialed in w the new trans.

The two "new" Hot Rod issues are useless to me- just coffee-table stuff.
I have every single Hot Rod from 1948 (a few months are reprints) up to the present. They are truly useful to me. I've been subscribing since 1956, but no reason to subscribe now.

Hot Rod, Popular Hot Rodding and Car Craft were the Bible to me when I was 12 on and helped me build my first car when I was 16 - pictured as my avatar. It’s sad to see their demise.

I found a copy of Pete McCarthy’s book when I was eighteen and that enlightened me on keeping Firebirds and Trans Ams stock and how rare some of them were.

The best magazine left is HEMMINGS Muscle Machines --- and this month has a mint 1966 GTO on the cover. Hagerty's magazine a close second in quality. Only two rags that are a must read!

I haven't looked at a Hot Rod magazine in over 20 years.

the tech stuff was always what i liked. Circle track had some good stuff for awhile when Jim McFarland was writing for them.