Chewing ScrewsAfter all, the reason for CHEVY HIGH PERFORMANCE is to inform and entertain, to be fun, to poke and be poked, and more than anything else, to bring like-minded people together in a common cause. The idea is to do the best you can with what you've got and to follow what you feel in your heart.
Surely, hot rodding is a state of mind, but no two minds are alike, and no two minds will ever agree completely. If you asked me, I'd say that hot rodding was about dreaming, and then I'd tell you that we don't dream enough and that maybe we take this hobby way too seriously. The bottom line is not money. One of the core tenets of hot rodding is to help one another. There aren't any journalists living here, either-car-crazy dreamers and to-the-bone enthusiasts live here. The only ideal to which we adhere is being true to you and to ourselves.
As much as we'd like to believe that our lives are full and well-rounded, they are not. What we do is not left at the office every night. We carry it with us as a full-time responsibility. It's what we do and we do it all the time. We check e-mail at the dead of 3 a.m. We return readers' phone calls, quite often to their utter amazement. We use some select freelancers because their voices are often different from ours. None of them do it full-time; they all have "regular" jobs. They're in it because they love it. They feel honored and lucky to be part of the CHP staff.
We champion the attributes of sensible, affordable, drivable machinery, but we also maintain that hot rodding is a universe of wonderfully disparate appetites and of budgets that run from no-buck to those so well-funded that even the most expensive of cars costs chump change. We also maintain that the core of our system is (has been and always will be) peopled by those who would rather emulate the status quo than deviate from the comfortable, inoffensive path to satisfaction. As you've been reading, we're out to change that some. CHP has become known for its engine tech, but you've indicated that you want more than that-more features, more whole-car buildups, stuff that doesn't center on the engine. Fewer '67 Camaros and more affordable and available A-, G-, and F-bodies.
Periodically, you recount the disturbing advertising-to-editorial ratio. Though reality says that without advertising bucks it's unlikely that CHP or any other newsstand publication would survive for long. Our editorial staff bristles at that inequity even more than you, believe me. And it's a fact of life in this kind of publishing that advertisers must be stroked at regular intervals and that they get nuts over something real or imagined which they feel ranks on their stuff.
Every so often, we do something that sends them into apoplectic spasms. Months after the fact, we were still getting raked about the outcome of a project, but one of those offended approached our wake-up call in a totally objective way, allowing that, "Maybe we all need a slap in the face from time to time to remind us that we haven't got as much control as we think we have." His candor and honesty will remain a clear spot in my memory, a soothing piece of truth to be unwrapped and held like a warm thing on a cold, dark day.
The upshot of this is the equity we're building. You can track just so much of the obvious before becoming boring and predictable. So get up and get behind the wheel. Blow some doors off. Put a blown V-6 in that Chevette. Keep your car in prime. Don't race on the street. Drive a station wagon. Run big tires on all four corners. Drive a pickup truck. Get 22 miles per gallon on the highway. Button your lip. Blow somebody's mind. Be courteous, kind, trustworthy, and brave, but keep the Boy Scoutisms in context. Sometimes they get in the way of real life. Just do right . . . and amaze everyone.--RM