Issue #2 of Australian Hot Rodder picks up the story of Australian Hot Rodding where #1 left off, with 152 glossy, full-colour pages jam-packed with great in-depth stories and stunning photography of some of the best hot rods built in this country.
It starts with Colin Bate’s beautiful ’36 Ford coupe, which features on the cover. The coupe caught Colin’s eye when he first saw it in the late 1960s and when it came up for sale in the mid-’70s he jumped at the chance to own it.
In the years he’s been able to call it his, Colin has twice rebuilt it, he’s also shown it, drag raced it, and driven it daily. We chronicle the absorbing story of this true classic of Australian hot rodding.
With the ’32 Ford turning 80 this year, we reckoned it was timely to look at the icon of hot rodding in Australia; it’s history, its appeal to hot rodders, along with a selection of some of great Deuce roadsters.
Included are the Buhagiar/Azzopardi ’32 roadster that wowed show-goers in the 1960s, as well as the stunning channelled ’32 roadster built by Kevin Daley, the sizzling hot road racing roadster of Ray Sprague, and the new highboy of AHR’s publisher, Graham Smith.
Drag racing is now a high tech, big dollar sport, but back in the 1960s when it was just getting started here it was possible to race your everyday driver.
Back then Eddie Thomas was the king of the drag strip in his big, blown Chrysler rail. He dominated local drag racing, set record after record and beat all comers, and took the fight up to the visiting American team of drag racers when they came here for the Dragfest in 1966. Old ‘ET’ is still powering on as we discovered.
Bob Keith was the captain of the American team who visited our shores for that Dragfest series and raced a stunning big-block Chevy rail. A chance meeting between Keith and Brisbane-based drag racing writer, Lex Swayn, led to the idea of re-creating Keith’s old car. We went to Willowbank in Queensland to photograph the result.
In a feature-packed issue we also look at the new ’34 Ford coupe Leno Pirotta built the old way, we also chart the history of Neil ‘Ned’ Kelly’s well known ’35 Ford coupe, and look at the flamed ’40 Ford convertible Leo Spessot has driven to every Street Rod Nationals staged to date.
