The OverhaulI'm back! That's either a godsend or a deal breaker depending on your view of my tenure as editor of this rag from 1997 to 2000, so let's review: you can't have too much horsepower, trailer queens suck, variety rules, free is better than good, and there's no room for imports or wrong-wheel drive anywhere in Car Craft. Though I'm wholly prepared to retract any disparaging remarks I may have once made about turbos, I still say there's still no such thing as too big a cam, just not enough motor. True then, true now, and tenets of the all-new fuel-burning Car Craft. Street machines are forever and no one will stop us from having fun with them again. Chevy Craft? Adios. Safe 300hp small-blocks? Boring. Average is outta here.
So here's the gig. I'm still editor-in-chief at Hot Rod too, and in case you hadn't dropped by there in a while, it's had a massive revamp and corporate investment that, luckily for my greasy hide, paid off with huge newsstand sales and advertising response. That, along with the deafening buzz from CC readerland, made our VP and Group Publisher Doug Evans (who smokes too much while croaking orders in our general direction) wake up a few months ago and realize that the world's second-largest performance mag-the one you're holding-could probably also use a tune-up. And tune we will. Like Sawzall tune. Right now I'm still in the stage just after dragging home the latest project car and donning gloves to avoid that mystery sconge on the carpet while gutting the interior. It will be a long several issues from now before you see the result of our overhaul, none of which involves sleep, but all of which requires doing whatever it takes to deliver a magazine that inspires the kind of passions that make you build frivolous street machines you really can't afford.
That means CC will live on as the exact magazine you expect it to be: all about riotous fun with nothing but pure American V-8 muscle. No trucks, no Hondas. In the garage, it's about tech that means something to you personally and that includes every price, every trick, every success, and perhaps most importantly, every failure. Out on the streets it's a return to Car Craft going nationwide to live the hobby and tell you what's happening out there. And with next month's announcement of a new Cruisin' USA program, you can join us.
I'll eventually hire a CC editor to fill in the blanks while I ramrod the editorial direction, but the Ginsu will be against my jugular if I don't make a clearcut difference in Hot Rod and Car Craft, making both of them stronger than they ever were in the so-called heyday. HRM is the dream, CC is the reality, and honestly you need to read 'em both to be a complete human. But that's the last of the sales pitch, cuz it will never be Car Craft's job to suck up to Hot Rod. Not under my watch.
Car Craft will once again own the world of musclecars from the garage to the street to the dragstrip. You comin'?-David Freiburger