50 Years of Hot Rod

Most car enthusiasts will be familiar with the Hot Rod magazine and this book is a chronical of Hot Rod magazine. The books is categorised into 5 chapters covering the fifties, the sixties, the seventies, the eighties and lastly the nineties.

In the fifties the magazine was mainly covering the drag racing as it evolved into the sport we see today and the formation of the NSRA.

Through the sixties the magaizine covered the big names such as Mickey Thompson, the Summers Brothers and Art Arfons as they became legends in the newly formed automotive arena. As well as covering drag and competition Hot Rod also had pictures of some of the amazing creations by big names such as Ed Roth.

As time progressed hot rodding and car customising became a huge industry and with the arrival of names like Boyd Coddington in the nineties a Hot Rod became the new must have accessory. Celebrities such as ZZ Top all put in their orders for the next cool ride the majority of which adorned the pages of the Hot Rod magazine.

It is interesting to see how the hot rod and car customising community has formed throughout the last 50 years and this book shows it in a very visual and easily digestible format.

If you would like to see the whole review of 50 Years of Hot Rod then click here.

Merchants of Speed: The Men Who Built America's Performance Industry

This book is for budding automotive historians everywhere and describes how the all majority of the big names in performance parts came into existance. This is a very big book packed with pictures from the various companies founders private collections showing the small garages and workshops where it all began.

Through the book many of the founders tell their tales of the relentless quest to go faster and the lengths they went to to achive this, sometimes leading to the inevitable accident.

The following big-names are listed in the book without whom the hot-rodding world maybe a very different (and slower) place:

• Ansen
• Braje
• Crane
• Edelbrock
• Engle
• Evans
• Herbert
• Hilborn
• Howards
• Iskenderian
• McGurk
• Navarro
• Offenhauser
• Potvin
• Scott
• Sharp
• Spalding
• Tattersfield-Baron
• Thickstun
• Wayne
• Weber
• Weiand
• Wilson

You can see the whole review of Merchants of Speed: The Men Who Built America's Performance Industry by clicking here.

About The Author
A longtime hot rod and drag racing enthusiast, Paul D. Smith split his time between Southern California and his native Canada while writing and researching this, his first book. Today he resides in Orillia, Ontario.

The Complete Book Of Dodge And Plymouth Muscle

If you are a fan of classic American muscle cars then this book will definately appeal to you! It is packed from cover to cover with pictorial history of the Dodge and Plymouth cars from 1960 through to 1974. If it was build by Dodge or Plymouth then you'll find it in this book.

The book is divided into 10 sections each one giving detailed information on a specific model. As well as pictures of pristine examples of each car there are lots of statistics such as wheelbase, original cost, compression ratio, horse power etc and there is also information about the history and development of that model during the years.

At the beginning of the book is an introduction which gives lots of interesting information about the development of the famous Hemi engine which is still a popular choice in many customised vehicles.

You can see the entire review and pictures of 'The Complete Book Of Dodge And Plymouth Muscle' by clicking here.

Art of the Hot Rod

There aren’t many books that everyone that sees it wants to borrow it but this is definately one of them! It is packed from cover to cover with hundreds of high-quality glossy pictures that will have any hot-rod enthusiast drooling!

The book covers 20 of the top hot-rod artisans whose attention to detail and quality is extremely high. Each chapter has a small amount of text introducing the person behind the cars and detailing what motivates them and where they get their inspiration. The following builders are each covered by the book;

* Dave Simard
* Jim Lowery Jnr.
* Rolling Bones
* Ken ‘Posies’ Fencial
* Alan Johnson
* Bobby Alloway
* Troy Trepanier
* Barry Lobeck
* Rick Dore
* Dave Crouse
* Donn Lowe
* Steve Frisbie
* Don Orosco
* Richard Graves
* Kennedy Brothers
* Pete Chapouris
* Zane Cullen
* Steve Moal
* Roy Brizio
* Vern Tardel

If you want to read the whole review and see some of the pictures from Art of the Hot Rod book then click here.

About the directory

The Just Customz website has always aimed to become a one-stop resource for the global car customising community and this has now become a step closer with the launch of their own web directory. The site attracts thousands of car enthusiasts every day and the addition of the new niche directory has been very popular. The directory lists everything from magazines to those difficult to find parts, accessories and services

The directory is broken down into an easy to navigate hierarchical structure starting with similar all-encompassing sites, like Just Customz, and filtering down to those difficult to find niche directories such as custom car insurance etc.

If you are a supplier of an automotive related service, facility or store you may be asking yourself why you should become part of this directory. There are two big advantages to becoming part of the directory which are:

a. Access to a huge volume of potential daily traffic that will be consumers of the service that you provide.

b. Many of the main search engine algorithms use inbound links as a measure of popularity and directly affect the positioning of a site in the search results.

If you read around the subject of link building, particularly with regard to directories, you’ll see that human edited and moderated directories often (not always) rate more highly than many of the free link farms that are available. You’ll also read that the more specific a directory is then the higher its value from a search engine perspective. It is important that your site is submitted to the correct sub-directory to gain the optimum benefits of the inclusion. This is because each sub-category is very specific and targeted at a very particular sub-set of keywords.

New Directory

I have finally updated the directory on the site now. It now behaves in the same way as all the on the web and accepts both non-reciprocal and reciprocal links. The directory is broken down into a hierarchy of categories that each have a topic relevant to the car customising community and will hopefully be of use to my visitors.

Mickey Thompson Book Review

The tragic story of Mickey Thompson as told by Erik Arneson is a compelling read and is difficult to put down. The book opens with a touching foreword by Mickey Thomspon's son, Danny Thompson, before explaining in the first chapter how Mickey and his wife Trudy were both shot outside their home.

The book paints a picture of a charismatic and very determined man that achieved great things. Mickey was very good using the media to his advantage and often used it to help fund his next beig project.

Mickey was alway an innovator and this was proved when he decided to form his own team for the indy car racing. His new low center-of-gravity cars blew away the competition and led others to quickly follow. There is a also an explanation of how the famous Mickey Thompson tyres came about when Mickey realised the only way to get ahead of the competition in the indy car racing!

About the Author

Erik Arneson was a design editor and motorsports reporter for USA Today, winning the NHRA’s Media Award in 1998 .He then became active in motorsports public relations. Today, he is director of public relations for SPEED Channel. This is his first book.

You can see more about the book here.