“I was entranced by this emerging culture, and it hooked me and my mates in a vice-like grip. It could be summed up as American popular culture once again conquering our mind, body, and souls”
Drag racing and hot rodding do not spin everyone’s crank, that’s a given. But in the early ’70s, particularly around Auckland and possibly Christchurch, a fascination for hot rods and quarter-mile racing burst out of the woodwork.
I was entranced by this emerging culture, and it hooked me and my mates in a vice-like grip. It could be summed up as American popular culture once again conquering our mind, body, and souls.
There was a lot to like at the time. The staid English script that had underwritten our youth was looking particularly fossil-like. We were around the age of 14–15 years and ripe to be brainwashed by the bold and brash American model.
SEDUCED BY THE HOT ROD CULTURE
It began as a sort of osmosis of a number of things. Standout memories include the array of AMT hot rod and drag racing plastic assembly kits. These were made locally under licence by Tonka Toys and appeared in our local toy shops. They descended out of nowhere in the late ’60s and got our attention in no uncertain terms. The wonderful cover art seeped into our fertile receptive minds. We acquired a number of these.
We were also like lambs to the slaughter when the new wave of hot rod literature appeared on the shelves of neighbourhood bookshops. magazine emerged in 1967 – still the longest-running New Zealand automotive magazine – and it was a window into the
