For some reason, my grade school library had a subscription to “Hot Rod” magazine. My suspicion has always been that it was one of the few magazine subscriptions for boys my age that was acceptable to have in the school library. Nevertheless, I spent a lot of time in that library paging through those magazines and looking at the rad cars. Back then, all I knew about hot rods was that they were the cars in the ZZ Top music videos. But it was the beginning of my early fascination with classic, antique, and hot rod automobiles.
And I’m not the only one. In fact, some of today’s mechanics first had their automotive interests piqued by paging through “Hod Rod” magazine in their salad days. For example, Michael Gotzon, owner and CEO at Reasonable Auto Services LLC (an automotive repair shop), says it played a part in getting him interested in working on cars. “Everyone makes fun of me for spelling “kool” with a “k,” when in reality it’s because of Kustom Kar Kulture. Before going into the production end of the business, all I ever wanted to do was build Kustom old school hot rods. I always had an interest in mechanics and going fast. Growing older, reading the magazine, seeing what could be done, and starting to appreciate the artistic side of it, I always wanted to open an old school hot rod shop.” Ultimately, though, Michael realized that small custom shops often struggle to make money, “so I went down the production side, but I became a painter and would do as much Kustom stuff as I could, a lot of times using the magazine for ideas or references.”