Editor and publisher John Knight reveals how Hot Rod Showcase came to be...
I got back into hot rodding in 2005 after a 15-year absence and was amazed at the quality and quantity of rods at runs like Billing and Old Warden, compared to the last time I was there.
It struck me that there are so many quality cars around in the UK that most will never get the recognition they deserve in traditional magazines because of limited space. So we set out to create a publication which mirrors the maturity and diversity in the hot rod movement here in the UK.
The result is the Hot Rod Showcase. And it is a book - with its own pukka ISBN number - rather than a magazine. And as such it contains no letters page (you can submit comments through our web site), no tech articles (others do that much better than we could), no major event reports, no calendar of events and, most significantly, no advertising. Just rods. And lots of 'em! You'll find over 100 large format, landscape pages - and well over 200 high quality photographs - featuring 12 rods and their owners in detail (articles range from 6 to 12 pages per feature), along with many more that are featured in a couple of rodders' personal journals from smaller, more intimate journeys.
Publication date is slated for 28 February 2007. We hope you'll have as much enjoyment reading this book as we have had putting it together. And we also hope that, like us, you will want to see more editions in the months and years to come. We've produced a limited run of 3,000 copies. If we sell two-thirds, then we'll produce Volume 2, and so on until, hopefully, it becomes a regular publication. That really is up to YOU. So, if you like Hot Rod Showcase and want it to become that regular publication, please don’t lend your copy to your friends – tell them to buy their own!