Hot Car magazine - January 1973

The cover of my original copy fell to bits so long ago I'd forgotten what it looked like

Today I received in the post a copy of the first ever car magazine I bought. I was nine and a half years old and it made a significant impression on me. I bought it with my Christmas money and got the February edition, too, but by then I'd ran out of cash as my pocket money back then was five new pence.

I proceeded to read both these issues of Hot Car until they literally fell apart.
So getting my scuffed fingers on a replacement issue of my first ever car mag has been a real trip down memory lane.

Pictures like these kept me drawing for years

It was the article about the grass track banger racing that really caught my imagination. Here were every day saloons, just like my parents' car, being used in competition. I was hooked and the following summer my father took me to see the 1973 World Banger Championships at the Cornish Stadium at St Austell. I was 10 and it was my birthday treat. The noise and spectacle of 101 old cars crashing into each other was just incredible. It was so loud I had a tummy ache - that's how loud it was. The winner was a Mk1 Ford Zephyr if I recall correctly. My favourite was an old London Taxi.that made it into the last dozen cars running.

I've been drawing racing cars ever since it seems. My interest was pretty strong before but something about those familiar old cars racing in front of me meant I could never be quite the same again.

And the January 1973 edition of Hot Car was where my enthusiasm really took off.

Hot Car covered the whole gamut of special building from hot rods to competition to kit cars to this vintage Mercedes replica based on a London taxi. It's well done though, dontcha think?

It was apparent that its wasn't just me that had this fascination with motor cars. In fact. it seemed everyone was up to something with cars.


In those days, Hot Car magazine was a mish-mash of competition, DIY and mild customising articles. Kit cars often got their first exposure in its newsprinty pages and sometimes the pictures were in colour! Amazing!

Three Custom Cars, viewers, but not as we know them

Later in the seventies, Hot Car embraced the hot rod and customising movement wholeheartedly but in 1973 it was about ordinary blokes learning about their cars and "improving" them - sometimes in questionable taste. Young guys had a car and a bit of spare cash. There was a grass roots car culture and it was very egalitarian. Construction and Use Regulations weren't so tight and there was literally a fun car explosion.

Some of these cars actually look quite good. That Beetle hasn't dated much and the Spridgets (top left and bottom right) appeal hugely me to me. Wakelin's wagon and the Minor next to it I'm not so sure about - at least rust was cut out and avoided. The red thing at bottom left was made of wood. Just goes to show what fun 6 guys had with their cars and their ingenuity

We've lost something since those heady days of such promise. We've gained in expertise, professionalism, performance and - let's face it - style but the restrictions are far worse. Insurance premia (that's the correct plural for premium, I'll have you know) are almost punitive for youngsters these days and many are turning their back on car culture. They are happier with computers - cheaper, more socially acceptable and less oily. The roads are more crowded, too, and fuel feels more expensive even though eminent professors assure us that it was actually more expensive in the pre Arab-Israeli war days in real terms - whatever that means.

I probably won't read this issue to pieces but I can feel it working its magic on me again, even after all these years.

I still can't have too much of these kinds of pictures. Saloons like these were HARD and took loads of punishment, not like today's modern rubbish. Without all their glass they went surprisingly well. But if anyone wants to banger race them nowadays, I want to save them. Non contact competition formulae are okay though.

Stock car and banger racing was big in the west country about this time but I lived in about the only village in Cornwall without a resident racer.

Hot Car magazine was how I got my exposure to motorsport.

It was also the first ever magazine that I bought with a semi-naked woman in it.....