Hot Rod Digest - providing Hot Rodders with Ideas, Specs, and Data about hot rods and the hot rod culture

ZZ Top Eliminator Car

In 1974 after watching the movie The California Kid, starring Martin Sheen, Billy Gibbons of the famous rock group, ZZ Top found himself amazed by the 1933 Ford driven by Sheen in the movie.Soon afterwards Billy was able to contact the car owner, Pete Chapouris. Billy was convinced that he had to have a ’33 Roadster for himself.The only factor left was to find a ’33 Ford Coupe for the project.Billy was now searching for a donor car.Remember this was in the days before Ebay and Craigs List. Billy got lucky and actually found a one owner 1933 Ford Coupe owned by a ‘little old lady’ in TucsonArizona.Billy flew to Tucson and was amazed when he saw the absolutely pristine car.The lady had bought the car, driven it very little and parked it.The custom work was done by Don Thelen of Paramount. The transformation from stock to hot rod took a long five years.The pictures below are a trib...

Hot Rod Trucks are HOT!

This past summer at a local car show, Hot Rod Digest asked over 500 participants the following question. “Of all the trucks every produced, which year, make and model most exemplifies the Ultimate ‘Hot Rod-able Truck’. Overwhelmingly the number one response was, (drum roll please), The 1956 Ford F100, big window pickup. Actually this did not surprise the staff of Hot Rod Digest at all, as the scarcity of the big window version of the ’56 f100 makes it even more desirable. Ford produced 127,500 F100’s in 1956, but only 6,200 had the big window, and that was nearly 55 years ago. So they are a bit on the rare side, which probably is one reason for their popularity. Hot Rod Digest was well on board the ’56 ‘big window’ train years ago when we purchased a ’56 for our own project vehicle. Not being able to find a big window truck, we purcha...

Our New Spokesmodel

Meet Courtney, our new Hot Rod Digest Spokesmodel! Courtney is is studying business at the University of Utah and is a 4.0 student. She'll be at all of the Hot Rod Digest events this year including Speed Week at the Bonneville Salt Flats and the SEMA show in Las Vegas. In addition, she will be representing us at numerous car shows throughout the US. ...

Special Edition Mustangs

Wow ! It seems like just about every week I see another Special Edition Mustang being launched. I’ve kinda lost track of how many are on the market right now. Don’t get me wrong; I love these one off’s and limited production cars. I’ve always been the kind of guy that likes to drive something just a little out of the ordinary, and some of these special edition treatments for the 2010 and 2011 Mustang are really nothing short of incredible. I’m certain I will miss a few, but let’s have a go at putting together a list. Let’s see we have the Shelby Special Edition and the 40th Anniversary Shelby, the Barrett-Jackson, the California Special, the AirVenture AV-X10, the Roush, the DUB Magazine (see article below), the Steeda Sport Edition, the Iacocca 45th Anniversary Edition, even a New York Yankees Special Edition. I know a probably missed a few, so send me an email and let’s keep track of all these Spe...

The Need for Speed: Bonneville

01 March 2011 All of us here at Hot Rod Digest feel honored and excited about our sponsorship and involvement in the build and running of our ’32 Roadster at Bonneville later this year. Below are some pictures that document the dyno testing of our dualEar rotor Mazda racing engine. During our first couple of dyno tests at Metric Motors we tested well over 500 horse- power, we encountered several problems including, chrome plating coming off interior of the oil pan. This sucked flakes of plating thru out the engine. Then we had to replace vacuum lines with larges ones to increase vacuum. Then we blew a couple of gaskets at high rpm’s. Then we had to build 3 different waste gates, each one larger than the last. We are now dyno-ing in excess of 600 horsepower @ 8500 rpms. Seems like we are making progress. 03 March 2011 Tomorrow is the Autorama Car Show in Salt Lake. We are showing our ’32 Coupe as well as our ’32 Roa...

The Chevy Nomad Era

A couple of weeks ago I was trying to remember exactly when it was that the 1955-57 Chevy Nomad ceased being that kid haulin’ station wagon and became that sexy, classic vehicle, that everyone drools over at the car shows. Growing up in the 50’s and 60’s I was always drawn to the Chevy Bel Airs and Impalas. The Nomads were to me in the early 60’s just a Chevy that someone bought ‘cuz they had too many kids to put in a Bel Air. There was a neighborhood market about a half block from my house and they had a 1957 Chevy delivery wagon. It had the name of the market on the side and was used for deliveries for over 20 years. I never gave it a second thought until the mid-seventies. I guess that when I started realizing the true beauty of the Nomads. This era of vehicles is sad to say, one that can never be repeated. We can however revisit th...

How it all Began

In January 2011, the Editor of Hot Rod Digest, Barry Hadley, met with Don Youngblood, owner and master builder of Youngblood's Hot Rods. The sole purpose of the meeting was to set up a schedule to shoot pictures of some of Don's Magnificent Hot Rods.

What transpired in that meeting was scheduling the photo shoot, but believe me, it was much more than that. By the end of the meeting, plans had been laid to build a Salt Flats Race Car.

February thru August of 2011 saw the plan turn into a frame, a body, an engine and it finally came together in August. Paint was added, engine was dyno-ed, and we were off to the Salt Flats.

Now with the H/STR record firmly under our belt, we are starting on a G/STR. That's a 'G' Class Street Roadster. Follow our next build and join us at Bonneville in August 2012.

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