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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

Ijust bought a 1966 Chrysler New Yorker. Why? Pure, blind nostalgia. I purchased my first “winter beater” when I was in high school. Yep, it was a 1966 New Yorker. Mine was a Town Sedan — the bottom-of-the-line 6-window, 4-door post car. It was your typical Midwestern Mopar, its white […]