With the red rocky crags and metal-crunching monoliths fresh in my mind, I’d like to take a moment to talk about Moab.

This special place in Utah does everything it can to pulverize you, and the pulverized evidence of the place fills not only your ears and your eyes and your nose, but your soul, too. Moab is one of those few places on Earth that enchants with its harshness and implores with its desolation, which is why so many Read More

A few weeks back, I was at a party where the host approached me with an acquaintance in tow. I was introduced as “Jay, the car guy I was telling you about.” My plan to remain anonymous and keep the bartender company had been thwarted. Luckily, this guy, let’s call him Tom, was about as nice as they come. Unfortunately for him, he started in on specifics and asked for my opinion.

Tom had a desire to find an original Read More

In our last episode of “Horsepower,” I warbled along to this essential point: New cars just don’t really do it for me.

Editor Pickering, my Instigator in Chief, responded with, “That was great! And now I have a new car coming for ya!” I think he likes to watch me squirm. Having already piloted a Hellcat-powered Charger down the West Coast and back on one of his trips to Pebble Beach, I think he figured some seat time in a Read More

The 1993 introduction of the fourth-gen Camaro rocked me right to the depths of my puny pre-teen core.

Really, it was just that one commercial — the one with the red Z/28 drifting sideways across wet asphalt in slow motion — that did it for me. Long, low, and packing 275 horsepower, the car came with a 6-speed manual transmission and a cup holder big enough to hold a Slurpee. The hook was deeply set.

The idea that Chevrolet was Read More

The Pacific Northwest isn’t exactly well known for being a hot-rod hot spot, but Portland International Raceway hosts what must be one of the best weekly cruise-ins in the country. From June to September, hundreds of classic and collectible cars converge at the racetrack every Wednesday evening for the Beaches Cruise-In (http://beachesrestaurantandbar.com/community/cruisin/) — a laid-back show-n-shine that takes place alongside PIR’s Wednesday night bracket racing.

On the last Wednesday of this past September, we Read More

The process of writing for and contributing to the publication of a magazine can, at times, feel a bit like a long, lonely, one-way conversation. We report, we analyze, we predict, and we assess — all in an effort to create content that we hope you find engaging, thought-provoking and relevant in ways that are both entertaining and insightful.
There are times, however, when I just can’t help but wonder where all those words land once they’re shot out Read More

I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting out of my first trip to the SEMA show in Las Vegas, but the event somehow ended up being both everything and nothing I thought it would be.

Let me put it this way — I can say with some confidence that whatever it is you’ve heard about SEMA, it’s true. All of it.

The event is carried out on a scale that is virtually impossible to articulate on paper, and the Read More

Ispent a LOT of my teenage hours nose-down between the pages of one hot-rod magazine or another.

I read them cover to cover. Over time, I eventually grew weary of reading what seemed like the same feature article intro over and over.

I’m sure you know the one — guy reluctantly parks old car for decades to build family/house/life, but finally gets around to car of his dreams.

The only sorrier story was guy reluctantly sells old car to build Read More

Sometimes I don’t always plan as far ahead as I should. Some may call it procrastinating, but I’m not ready to cop to that. Rather, I see planning for things at the 11th hour as a sign of extreme flexibility and a way to make every day a new adventure. My wife, however, vehemently disagrees.

However, for this year’s Shelby American Automobile Club’s National Convention, known as SAAC-42 to the faithful, I was pretty damn proud of my advance planning. Read More

Half-life” (denoted in scientific equations as t½) is the principle typically used to measure how long radioactive decay takes to reduce something to half of its initial value. Scientists, of which I am certainly not one, seem to think t½ is constant. I, perhaps due to the previously mentioned lack of education in this realm, do not — at least not as it applies to old car parts. To me it seems like this half-life thing is accelerating at an Read More