“You’ve got to have a foreign taste, just to keep balance . . .”– G.T.O. , “Two-Lane Blacktop” (1971).
I stood at the newsstand wondering “What in the world would they know about hot cars in Argentina?”
Argentina! Aren’t they more known for Evita Peron than “Elephant motors?”
I was holding Volume 1, Number 1 of the English edition of Classic Wheels magazine, “the first Latin American premium magazine entirely dedicated to classic and sports cars, created and printed in Argentina.”
It was purely an accidental find.
Browsing a well-stocked newsstand (not a local convenience store magazine rack) and stumbling across such curiosities is becoming a lost pursuit. As the information world moves on-line, some futurists say printed magazines will soon become as obsolete as a milk churn or a buggy whip.
Apparently they didn’t get that memo in “Ciudad Autonoma de Buenos Aires.” Or elsewhere, as the newsstand was packed with a plethora of automotive titles from across the globe.
Old school BangShifters remember the days when about the only diversity in car magazines was the irreverent, sarcastic swagger of the New York hot rodding magazines versus the cool professionalism of the ones from California (with the occasional elitist “buff book” and U.K. title mixed in).
Now, if you’ve got the money and the time, you can get a “foreign taste” on how enthusiastic motoring, motorsports — and even BangShifting — are done from nearly every continent, except maybe Africa.
But what could an American BangShifter possibly learn from traveling the motoring world via the newsstand?
Perspective. Balance. Insight. Community.
For example, that Argentine car magazine contains a uniquely Latin perspective on various all-American rides, such as George Barris’ 1966 Batmobile, the behemoth GM Futureliners, and the first visit of Chrysler’s 1963 A 831 turbine car to the Buenos Aires racing circuit. It details how Kaiser’s Manhattan became the “Carabela,” the “first Argentinean sedan at great scale produced in assembling line.” (Part of the entertainment in foreign car magazines is in their frequently unusual use of our language).
All of that was a surprise.
Curiously, the editors of Classic Wheels seem to find a tie-in for most stories to Argentina’s national racing hero: Juan Manuel Fangio, the “piloto argentino 5 veces campeon mundial de F1 (five-time Formula One Champion from Argentina).” Fangio is apparently even more venerated there than the late Dale Earnhardt is around here.
One of the more entertaining features (with a Fangio tie-in, of course) was on the “6th Edition of the Gran Primo Historico Del ACA (Historical Grand Prix)” — a revival of a 63-hour (!) open road race which apparently has a class for anything from hulking, V8-powered Ford Mustangs to diminutive FIAT 600s.
Perhaps a single photograph in Classic Wheels — a snapshot of Formula One luminaries Jackie Stewart and Frank Williams with what appears to be a big-finned 1959 Buick Electra at Lord March’s “Goodwood Revival” last September — captures the international appeal and scope of motoring BangShift-style.
Of course, sometimes that “foreign taste” can come from American magazines on the newsstand. For example, The Rodder’s Journal Number Forty-Five (Fall 2009) contains the custom car illustrations of Janne Kutja. Kutja is a 29-year old artist from Finland, schooled in the works of Americans Chip Foose, Thom Taylor, Steve Stanford and in the historic Bellflower-Watson look of the 1960s. Amazingly enough, Kutja successfully transfers the vibe of 1950s and 1960s American custom style to P121 and P544 Volvos and a 1966 BMW 1600. The Rodder’s Journal terms it “Customs with a Scandinavian slant.” Indeed!
Another “foreign taste” from that day at the newsstand was Racecar Engineering: The International Journal of Motorsport Technology. The October 2009 issue contains stories as diverse as Formula One technology transfers to the off-road Dakar endurance rally, the sad NASCAR-izaton of British Touring Car racing, Penske’s new “regressive valve” shock technology, and a full-blown engineering explanation of the “force based” approach to anti-dive and anti-squat effects of suspension geometry (which reportedly is the subject of a “lively debate”). That’s heady stuff which would seldom be seen in an advertising-driven American magazine.
However, a more practical, hands-on, grassroots approach to “foreign” BangShifting is as close as your computer. Most BangShifters have undoubtedly discovered Australia’s AutoSpeed on-line magazine. AutoSpeed claims to be “amongst the largest of modified car websites in the world, with over 3000 articles published since 1999.” Edited by a former secondary school teacher named Julian Edgar, almost no tuning “hack” or mass-produced car is off-limits.
In a way, AutoSpeed harkens back to the time when nearly any vehicle could be made into a hot rod at home, no matter how pedestrian its origins. AutoSpeed often describes the sorts of home-brewed, step-by-step modifications that would make American aftermarket advertisers squirm and American magazine legal departments duck for cover.
A fair number of those 3,000 AutoSpeed articles include scores of home-built electronic circuits for performance enhancement. That’s something BangShifters almost never see in the American “black box” approach to hot rod journalism.
There are many other topics in AutoSpeed that you’ll likely never see in an American car magazine. AutoSpeed frequently employs home-style aerodynamic testing, featuring hundred of wool tufts taped over the body of a stock or hooned-out performance car for videotaping or photographing their behavior at speed on the highway! (More details on how to test aerodynamics without a wind tunnel are in Julian Edgar’s amazing book 21st Century Performance ). AutoSpeed has run many common-sense modification articles, such as how to build and tune your own boost pressure water injection system from a “breakers yard” (junkyard) radiator header tank and a handful of hardware store parts.
AutoSpeed, as well as Julian Edgar’s book, often explain the “why” behind various hacks and modifications. This tends to promote further creativity and refinements. The OZ approach is not overly academic because Edgar is committed to presenting things that his readers can “read about, reflect on, and then go out and do!” That is a different perspective than the “bolt-on” mentality afflicting much of American hot rodding.
AutoSpeed has even done some stuff that American BangShifters would probably never admit to thinking about, such as turbocharging a Toyota Prius. (Alright, maybe they went too far with that one)
Too often we BangShifters become myopically entranced by how we do things here in the U.S.A.: Four-barrels on crate motors, store-bought bolt-ons, pony cars and pedigreed, date-coded “American muscle”, reproduction “catalog & credit card” street rods, bracket racers, NASCAR, etc. But occasional “dashes out of the country every now and then” at the newsstand and computer for ” a foreign taste” can refine our thoughts and spark other ways of looking at Bangshifting.
“Vaya con Dios, mi amigos!”
I received my first loan when I was 20 and it supported my relatives very much. Nevertheless, I require the car loan over again.