Save your burnouts, wide-open throttle and revving engines for the after party. The 2013 CAR CRAFT Street Machine Nationals has switched gear from an all-day event to include an all-night midnight drag event. Whether you’re watching, racing or testing and tuning, CAR CRAFT wants to see you at our CAR CRAFT Midnight Drags presented by GEAR VENDORS which takes place Saturday, June 29th.

Holley will supply the cars and engines! You bring the team and tools!

There's nothing better than building a customized classic car and cruising it. It's safe to say our readers agree. This weekend was the yearly Anti Tour, filled with no advertisements, rules and criteria for fun. It's a rebellion to most "tours," and we like that it has a dedicated following.

The Car Craft staff is hitting the road for the annual 2013 Anti Tour and we're hoping you'll tag along! The tour is a great chance to meet the staff, cruise some classic cars, and enjoy the beautiful weather. It's a 3 day event, stopping for food, unique photo opportunities, and a huge car show. The tour begins at the Willwood Engineering Headquarters in Camarillo, CA, then heads to the CA33 and CA166 up to the final destination of Morro Bay, a total of 194 miles. This is the 3rd consecutive year to Morro Bay and we're excited to make it a tradition.

Auto Club Famoso Raceway and Boise's Firebird Raceway have joined together and formed the "Boise-Bakersfield Blitz," a four-race points-earning series for AA/Funny Cars in 2013.

Big tires, lots of chrome and unbelievable horsepower - that was the culture of the Street Machine Nationals (SMN) back in the day. Toby Brooks, an avid fan of the nationals and a huge muscle car lover, is bringing the car culture back to Du Quoin, IL. This year the SMN will return to Illinois June 28th-30th.

Part of the car crafting culture has always been joining together for burgers and fries at a local diner, staying up late chatting about burnt rubber and spilt coolant. The SoCalLX club revolves around that very idea. Embracing the late-model Mopar, this Southern California car club joins together the first Friday of every month at Beach Burgers in Huntington Beach, CA, to meet new people, catch-up with old friends and chow-down on burgers while talking cars.

For five previous years, the Goodguys have been inviting me to compete in what they call the Goodguys Editor Shootout Autocross. I've been a competitor in every one of these events and I've come away as the first loser twice so it's a competition that I look forward to every year. Each year I was first loser, I promised myself I would drive more in the weeks before the event to get better prepared, but magazine demands and just trying to keep my collection of leakers running always seems to supersede competitive seat time. This year was no exception. Except for a two-day class at Bob Bondurant's school in Phoenix (which was really helpful) I again this year was going in cold.

Interested in winning a trip to the 2013 SEMA Show in Las Vegas? Well, then send us a photo of you and your hands at their dirtiest and submit it to lava.moments.carcraft@sorc.com to be entered into our contest presented by LAVA Soap. Please see the Official Rules below. *Note: The SEMA Show is a trade-only industry event that is not open to the general public.*

Who's the host:

Original Parts Group Incorporated (OPGI)

John Lingenfelter, a drag racer who understood the science of the sport like few others, founded the engineering and tuning company that still bears his name. In late 2003, he succumbed to injuries suffered during a crash on the dragstrip in October 2002.

Like a favorite pair of jeans or that 9⁄16-inch wrench that feels perfect in your hand, Real Street Eliminator just keeps getting better. The headline says RSE VII, but that number reflects only the latest version. Ask a veteran CC reader, and he will tell you that RSE can trace its roots all the way back to the mid ’80s (May 1986), when we put four victims through their paces during a complex, two-day event. There have been dozens of events in the interim, and, since we’re supposed to be wiser, in the new millennium we’ve condensed RSE down to a three-part event held in conjunction with Car Craft’s Summer Nationals in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

This past summer, Source Interlink Media honored Carroll Shelby, one of the automotive world's most beloved icons, by unveiling a special tribute magazine and limited-edition hardbound coffee table book, produced under the direction of Motor Trend magazine with assistance from the editors of Automobile, Hot Rod, Muscle Mustangs and Fast Fords, and Mustang Monthly magazines.

It’s like one of those impossible English Composition class assignments: Describe the Summer Nationals in just one paragraph. Not gonna happen; the show defies labels. You can’t simply put it in a tidy box marked “muscle car show.” It’s Car Craft’s huge, annual street-machine get together held every July at the state fairgrounds in St. Paul, Minnesota. It’s more than a car show—it’s got cruising, seminars, kids’ activities, burnouts, bikinis, fairground food, and more. The cars in attendance are just as eclectic. We’ve got Pro-Street next to Pro-Touring, next to primer rods, and show-car restorations two cars over. We’ve also got competition in the form of Car Craft’s Real Street Eliminator, the results of which we will cover next month. Unlike on that class assignment, here at the magazine we have the luxury of including photos with our words, and that makes it easier to tell the story. So enough with the blabber—here are the pics.

Car Craft is all about having fun with cars. It's that simple. Over the years, we've invited our readers to pull their cars off the jackstands and apply the vulcanized steel belts to the highway. In the past, we've been to Hot August Nights in Reno, Nevada, braved the heat in Phoenix, Arizona, for some dragstrip fun, stayed local and hit the dragstrip in Barona, California, and even combined Anti Tour with our Engine Swap Drags. Like last year, we headed north for the Cruisin' Morro Bay show that hit sweet 16 this year. While huge car shows are fun for their sheer size, we also dig events like the Morro Bay show because it combines the classic elements of plenty of cars and a crowd to make it interesting, but it's small enough that you don't have to line up at 4 a.m. to find a good parking spot. The weather was perfect, the locals were incredibly hospitable, the cars were fantastic, and despite a minor fender bender with one of our Tour cars, we couldn't have asked for a better event. So thanks to organizer Ken Vesterfelt's team. It's important to remember that it takes a small army of volunteers to put on a show like this. Without their long hours manning barricades and directing traffic, shows like this never become this good. Because of their efforts, we had a great time.

Brian Ambrosini's wheelstanding AMC has more than 14 million hits on YouTube--and it's no mystery why. The fiery orange Gremmie hangs all four wheels off the ground in what he calls the "bumper slide." When he buries the nose into the pavement and flings his grille into space, he just shrugs it off. It's a small price to pay to win the event.

“The biggest secret about street racers is that we don’t exist. While people are asleep in bed at 1, 2, 3 in the morning, we’re out racing.” Anonymous

During the last decade, drag racing has undergone more dramatic changes than at any other time in its storied history. National events run the gamut of the highly polished and professional NHRA Full Throttle series to the rather difficult-to-comprehend IHRA Nitro Jam affairs and more. In between are a myriad of events and organizations featuring everything from bought-in Pro Modifieds to serious, street-legal drags of mammoth proportions and marathon bracket races that no one ever hears about, but which pay out staggering sums to the lucky winners.

How many times have you wondered, How would my car stack up against those cars I see in the magazine? It's the age-old question, and Car Craft answered it by evaluating readers' cars in 1986 with the first Real Street Eliminator competition. Back then, the event encompassed a variety of contests and spanned several tracks. Now, 35 years later, we're still testing street-car mettle, but we've pared it down to three simple contests: a rear-wheel-horsepower chassis dyno blast, three days worth of driving on a challenging and twisting autocross course, and a 150-foot-long speed- stop challenge we call Launch Box.

What a summer it has been: The stock market took a dive, fuel costs fluctuated wildly, and record numbers of people remain unemployed. While Congress can’t seem to agree on how to fix our stagnant economy, if polled, they would all reach across the aisle to issue this decree: The ’11 Car Craft Summer Nationals presented by GM Performance Division was a resounding success. Even a Minnesota state government shutdown couldn’t crush the spirit of our faithful readers and show-goers, though for a few tense moments we worried a potential closure of the fairgrounds would scuttle this year’s show.

Have you turned in your Cruisin’ USA information form? If you haven’t, go download one at CarCraft.com or you’ll miss the chance to get the Car Craft staff to crash your favorite show. We’ve already selected a few venues that you’ll see in the coming months. Until then, enjoy these warm-up pics from the Cruisin’ Grand show in Escondido, California. If you live in the area, don’t forget to check out Fire Truck Night and Nitro Night at CruisinGrandEscondido.com.

Ostensibly, this trip's purpose was to rail against The Man and his coiffed and well-executed road trip. True to its nature, the Anti untied us with self-engineered instruments of salvation and whisked us through the barren stretches of Los Padres and into a fishing town bookended by bourgeois seaside retreats. But first, we stopped for doughnuts at Turbonetics.

If you’re old enough to remember the original bumble-bee Car Craft T-shirts and Camaro chin spoilers from the Mar. ’78 premier of the Cruisin USA series, you might know someone who was escorted out of Indy or Ohio in handcuffs, and it was probably our fault. We incited the riots by showing up at various cruises around the country bringing as many readers as possible. It was just like Tahrir Square, but without the camels.

In the world of drag racing, few promoters are as audacious as Byron Dragway's Ron Leek. Because of him, wheelstand mavens invade the beautiful Rock River, Illinois, area to get a front-row seat at the ultimate drag racing freak show. In the 16 years since the first World Power Wheelstand Championships, it has gone from a cult classic to a major event that brings in fans from the other side of the planet. Ron Leek was booming away on Byron's PA system interviewing John Ross and his family, who traveled all the way from Australia. John was heard to say, "I read about the wheelstand contest in Car Craft magazine and knew I had to go see it for myself." He's right and Byron Dragway packs the stands every year. Studying the photos is good for a thrill, but you'll have to be at the show to really appreciate it. It's our favorite thing to do in Ogle County.