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I blame it all on Custom Car. I was a happy, if gangly, schoolboy, with no particular interest in motor racing until one day I walked into my local newsagents and picked up an issue of Custom Car. I seem to remember that it had a beach buggy on the cover and as these were all the rage back then (and the semi circular Custom Car masthead was kind of neat (I bet they rue the day they got rid of that)) I dug deep into my pockets for the princely 2/6d and bought a copy. Needless to say by the time I’d finished pawing through the magazine it was ‘them long skinny cars with pram wheels on the front’ that had supplanted my fickle interest. But what on earth was this drag racing? I’d seen these crazy cars that Revell and Monogram made as model kits but had no idea that they didn’t race round corners… It didn’t take long to understand though. And Custom Car certainly made it fun learning. Today with all the ‘lads’ magazines it is hard to appreciate what a revelation Custom Car was back then. Here was a car magazine that didn’t contain men in tweed caps or boiler suits telling you how to regrind your head on a Mk2 Cortina. Lifting the bonnet was about as technical as CC ever seemed to go. No, the CC staff were more concerned with looking cool (if poodle haircuts, six inch sideburns and twelve inch flares could ever be described as cool…) going down the pub, and having a laugh. And Custom Car could make you laugh - out loud. I remember Colin Gamm (later to be editor) had an irreverent wit which could turn the most mundane article into an essential read, and God forbid anyone who ever wrote a letter to the magazine - unless public humiliation was their bag. Yet in-between all the mucking about, Custom Car's mission was plain: to brighten up our lives with the best street rods and the wildest drag racing action their staff could muster. But for a non-technical person, drag racing was also quintessentially simple. It didn’t require a degree in engineering to understand 7 litres of V8 in a slingshot chassis went bloody quick or that the air got sucked in here, the blower went round there, eight headers of flame came out here and if that was still too complicated you could just look and marvel at these chrome and candy works of art. Of course Hot Rod magazine was quickly added to my monthly diet and before I realised I knew more about drag racing, the USA and nitromethane than my history, geography and chemistry teachers could’ve dreamt of. It took a couple of years to persuade mum and dad to give me and some school pals a lift to Santa Pod, but when we finally got there… well words aren’t sufficient. Let’s just say it was Mecca, Christmas and sensory-overload all rolled into one. Thirty years later that drive up Airfield Road is still a buzz. And, yes, for my sins, I still buy Custom Car every month. (Before we get to the pictures, apologies to any camera buffs, I’m a spectator not a photographer. Sure, I wish I could’ve been a Paul Sadler or Steve Reyes but the old photos were taken on whatever the family camera was that used to languish in the sideboard and my prowess was limited by my piggy bank and understanding the purpose of Dad’s light meter. I finally got my own camera for my 21st birthday – a second hand Nikkormat. And over 21 years later it’s still my only camera. The brass has rubbed through and the back is secured by duct tape but at least pocket money is no longer a constraint for buying film.)
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