Automotive author, and all around cool car guy, Scotty Gosson recently asked myself and BangShift Contributor Cole Coonce if he could interview us on his blog page, Scotty Gosson Exposed. The request was certainly flattering, and after being too busy to help him out earlier this year on his new book America’s Coolest Station Wagons, we figured we owed him. His questions were cool, and it was a pleasure working with him. This week Scotty has done an interview with the rest of the Gosson family racing team, and you’ll want to check that one out as well. Scotty promises he’ll be interviewing interesting characters in the automotive world for you to read about throughout the year and beyond, so check in with him weekly. 

Below you can check out my interview, including Scotty’s questions about the NHRA, my cars, BangShift.com and more. Below that you’ll find Cole’s reasoning for referring to himeself as a guttersnipe.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Chad Reynolds Interview

Luckily
for us fun seekers, the hot rod universe is heavily populated with
colorful characters and Chad Reynolds has to be one of the most likable.
The name was already very familiar to me when I heard him announcing at
the Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitational in Nevada a few years ago. I
hotfooted it over to the platform and found Chad to be one of those
‘Hell yeah, let’s do it!’ kind of guys. I was instantly comfy with him.
Since then, we’ve crossed paths online a couple of times, but Chad has
remained a bit of a mystery to me. So when I asked if he’d be willing to
do a SGE interview, I shouldn’t have been surprised when he responded
with, “Hell yeah, let’s do it!”

Welcome to Scottyville, Chad. I’ve been looking forward to this for a
long time. One reason why: You’re known as a defender of grassroots hot
rodding, due to driving the wheels off your ’56 Chevy beater wagon,
wrenching on a wide variety of cool tin, and your work at
Bangshift.com.  Were you born with a silver wrench in your hand? Where
did you start rodding and how did that bring you to where you are today?

I appreciate it, Scotty. I certainly didn’t set out to be a fixture in
the hot rodding community, it just sorta happened. I grew up in Northern
California, at Fremont Drag Strip, and was born into this. It’s
genetic. Hell, my initials are CAR and it wasn’t by accident. My dad
raced all his life and still does, so growing up in a family that had a
race car just planted the seed. My Grandpa Earl owned an auto shop that I
spent most afternoons and all my summers at. Between him and my dad, I
was hooked. Hell, I probably put 100,000 miles on a floorjack before I
was 12.

My first car was my 1969 Camaro convertible, which I still have, and a
little Mitsubishi pickup I got from my Grandpa. Both were street raced,
cruised, and modified to the extent I could afford growing up and
nothing ever stays stock for long with me. After going through school
and working in the very lucrative high tech industry of Silicon Valley
and the Telecom Corridor in Dallas, I was hit by the crashing economy
and the fact that I was burned out, no matter how much money I was
making. So I did the idiotic thing and started a hot rod shop. It’s a
bad idea. Don’t do it. Seriously. The guys that make money at it are
awesome, but I didn’t. I did however, have a lot of fun. And that’s how
things got started to where we are now. After throwing together Rusty,
my ’56 Wagon, in 59 days and heading out on Power Tour, Freiburger and
Kinnan decided they wanted to run a feature on it. We got to know each
other and after hitting Drag Week in 2005 we all became friends. Hot Rod
asked if I would announce on Power Tour. I said yes and it’s been all
uhhhh downhill? from there.

Freiburger left Hot Rod and asked if I would go with him to start Car
Junkie TV and we were off. I’d been working at Spectre Performance
running their race car shop and loved it, but when Freiburger called, I
was in. Turns out, CarJunkieTV wasn’t going to make it with the
management team we had behind us and we lost our gig. With nothing else
to do, Freiburger, Brian Lohnes and I decided to start BangShift.com.
Ultimately, Freiburger had to go back to Hot Rod, but Brian and I stuck
with it. Trust me, our families sometimes wish we hadn’t, but it’s
really grown into something we are proud of and the growth still amazes
even us. For those of you that are regular BangShifters, thanks! For the
rest of you, “What are you waiting for?” It’s going to be an exciting
ride in 2011 and into 2012 as we have lots going on.

Sounds like quite a ride, just getting to this point… You pop up
often in David Freiburger’s stories, along with Keith and Tonya Turk.
Have you guys all been pals since childhood, or does David just pay you
to fix stuff as he tears it up? Do you see yourselves as the hot rod
mafia, or are your adventures just a normal part of your everyday life?

 Freiburger is one in a million. We really didn’t start hanging out
together a lot until 2006 or so. At that point, we started doing lots
of stories and I was helping out anywhere I could. I still show up
anytime they need help and are doing something fun. That surprises
people, because they think of BangShift and Hot Rod as big competitors.
We’re all friends and I love the magazine for sure.

Keith Turk is an interesting duck. He’s another guy that would give you
the shirt off his back and knows I would do the same for him. I met him
on the same Power Tour in 2005 and since then, we’ve done a lot at
Bonneville together with the Camaro. Keith runs the ECTA, is in more
200mph Clubs than any other human, and makes me look like I’m backing
up, with regards to talking. He’d argue otherwise, but his opinion is
wrong. Keith and Freiburger have been racing together for years and I’ve
loved working on the Camaro with them. I was lucky enough to get into
the car a couple years ago and try for the 200mph Club at Bonneville,
but we just didn’t have the combo we needed for me to make it. I do have
the distinction of driving the Camaro faster BACKWARDS than either of
the Turks or Freiburger! Not a good distinction, but…

To read the rest of Chad’s interview, click here.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Cole Coonce Interview

When
Hot Rod magazine added Cole Coonce to the staff in the 1990s, it not
only caught my attention, but changed how I read magazines forever. I
really didn’t think it could get any more personal than reading features
by Gray Baskerville and Ro McGonegal, but this guy’s style hit me right
where I lived: Here was the edgy immediacy of Hunter S. Thompson,
enhanced with a wordcraft worthy of a Kurt Vonnegut eyebrow arch. What
fun! What grabbed me the most was how Coonce raised the bar by going
under the surface. Intrigued, I seeked out a couple of his long-play
stories in paperback: ‘Infinity over Zero’ (guerrilla documentation of
the Land Speed Record wars pitting the U.S. against Britain) and ‘Top
Fuel Wormhole’ (a hilariously twisted psycho analysis of Nitromethane’s
allure). At that point, I was officially junk. Inspired (and yes,
influenced), I set out on my own automotive journalism quest. At this
point, I’m still in first gear, but by God, I have Cole Coonce on my
blog. Who’da thunk it… He crashed through the front window of the SGE
office in spectacular fashion and dusted himself off. We performed the
secret automotive journalist handshake ritual and got down to it.

This is quite an honor for me, Cole. Thanks for dropping in.

Glad to do it (shaking glass shards from hair).

Were you born a journalist, or if not, how’d you get into this stuff?

I got into journalism because I was turned on by two art forms when I
was a mere guttersnipe: Drag racing and rock ‘n’ roll. I saw The Beatles
at Dodger Stadium when I was four years old. I saw my first Top Fuel
dragster when I was five. I had an uncle Rick who was the drummer for
The Grass Roots, who had many Top 40 hits and ended up on American
Bandstand. His brother was a dragster driver. Because of their
influence, and the fact that I could see them both on their respective
stages on any weekend in Southern California, I became consumed with
both music and drag racing. I read everything I could on the subject,
whether it was Rolling Stone or Drag News. In my opinion, both race
reports and rock criticism were also art forms and every bit as valid as
the scenes they covered. I didn’t figure I could drive a Top Fuel car,
but I reckoned I could write about it.

Wow, you had a killer pedigree before you ever wrote your first words!

 Well, writing about something is only as valid as what one is actually
writing about. Dragstrip journalism was at its most crucial when the
drag racing itself was very dangerous, exciting and unpredictable. You
couldn’t wait to get the next National Dragster or Drag Racing USA
because you knew there was going to be something in it – a speed record,
some weird bondo-beyondo streamliner body shape, a macabre crash, some
violent and catastrophic explosion – that hadn’t ever happened before.
I’m of the opinion that most of the interesting stuff in both music and
drag racing has…

To read the rest of Cole’s interview, click here.