Modern Rodding Starting Over
Brian Brennan LAR '73
Been Here Before
By Brian Brennan

Y

ou do something enough times and it becomes “familiar.” Take off your favorite sweatshirt and you find yourself looking for it. Pretty soon you begin to think about wearing those comfortable Levis when you don’t have them on! Your hot rod is no different. I’ve had my roadster on the road for 14-plus years. During this time, the roadster has assisted me in making countless friends for which I am eternally grateful.

Over the course of time I’ve changed very little on the highboy: a set of wheels and tires and freshened up the brakes. (Although I can’t say the same for myself.) I can tell you every time I drop behind the wheel there’s a certain “feel” and “comfort” that overcomes me. It’s my favorite jeans, sweatshirt, and Barcalounger all rolled into one. There’s no mistaking the bond between myself and my roadster.

The time has come where I find myself putting aside one magazine for another. Let me tell you that the old one (Street Rodder) had a feel I had grown comfortable with and thoroughly enjoyed. When I think back, I can remember sitting in LeRoi “Tex” Smith’s office talking about what it would be like to have a “hot rod” magazine. Those one-on-one conversations would go on for hours and each dream became grander than the one before. Those dreams gave birth to a rodding magazine that was a half a year shy of half a century of service to the hobby and industry many of us grew up with and shared.

29 Ford HB Roadster
29 Ford HB Roadster

It’s time to “break-in” that comfortable feeling with a new magazine and begin another lifetime that, hopefully, will span another 50 years supporting a great hobby/industry that all of us will enjoy. Modern Rodding (and its sister publication Classic Truck Performance) are the new magazines on the rack. Yep, both a street rod and a classic truck publication to pick up and carry-on where the corporate decisions of the day have left all of us wanting. These books will feature the tech you want, the full range of features that drive out from the sturdy one-stall garage to the mega shop, along with other noteworthy happenings from within our hobby. Our objective is to … participate, report, entertain, and enlighten.

Those of us who make up In The Garage Media (ITGM) believe that the printed word is alive and vibrant. We also believe there’s a new way of doing things and it’s here that ITGM will bring the old and new together. Much in the way vintage tin is coupled with modern technology to yield a street rod.

Modern Rodding and Classic Truck Performance are produced via print and digital. Many of us grew up with, and still to this day find enjoyment in, carrying our magazine poking out of our back pockets. ITGM will partner a rolled-up magazine and your smartphone, neatly tucked away, that will carry all your rodding dreams. Yes, Modern Rodding and Classic Truck Performance will be available both in print and digital via subscription only.

It’s very doable to have a print magazine succeed as there are several of them thriving as I type. The secret is, the editorial “we” of myself and Rob Fortier behind the keyboards and Tim Foss strutting with an “IO” (insertion order) in hand.

Let’s celebrate your favorite cozy sweatshirt, your comfortable jeans, while stretched out on your Barcalounger with the latest issue of Modern Rodding or Classic Truck Performance or in the workshop beneath the cast of LED tubes leaning against your workbench enjoying the latest “light” on the road of rodding. Whatever your choice, paper and/or digital, here’s wishing a healthy and safe life going forward for all.

Modern Rodding | July/August 2020