OVERVIEW:
Sports Cars and Hot Rods was created by the editors of Mechanix Illustrated and
published by Fawcett in New York City. This team also created one-shot (annual) magazines such as
Best Hot Rods. It was a standard-sized format with a wide range of cars,
engines, suspensions, brakes and drive trains. Midget car content was
also included. The editor was John Kingdon, and only two issues were published.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, there was much debate, especially in the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA), about the definition of a sports car. The SCCA had banned hot rods and dirt track cars from their events in 1948. The purists felt that the sports cars definition should exclude European cars with American engines and also exclude custom built race cars. But a number of American hot rodders used foreign and domestic vehicles, U.S. powerplants and rodding skills to build "specials". The SCCA tried to outright ban these "specials" in 1950. The ban only lasted two weeks.
The early to mid-1950s was a period where sports car racing continued to explode in popularity. There were so many road racing specials built that there is no definite idea as to how many were made. But well-known handbuilt racers included Briggs Cunningham's BuMerc, Stropes Kurtis 500S, the Cadillac-powered Glasspar, the Tatum GM Special, the Duesenberg Ford, and many others. All used American components and ingenuity. So Sports Cars and Hot Rods briefly captured this amalgamation of modified vehicles, U.S. performance parts and hot-rodding skills to make sports car specials.
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PUBLICATION DATA:
The publisher did not provide net paid circulation data to NW Ayer.
CONTENT COMPLETENESS:
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