Jan 19 2009
A Truffling Matter
…sometime during the last decade of the 20th century, the slowly developed nipponese-based high performance car journalist community began to coalesce their energy. The colorful, often misogynistic, and always technically fascinating show and club scenes in LA, NYC and in-between had showcase quality periodicals available to help popularize, justify and…galvanize the import way of both racing and static action.
Tearing their forfathers limb from limb when necessary to advance technology, while keeping a nod and a wink about the seriousness of spending all that cash and social currency was a real triumph for the times. Leading the march of magazines for years was a now deceased read called TURBO, an at times risk taking publication. While not IMPORT RACER, neither was it CAR CRAFT-purposefully not stuck in the past days of a graying market. The durability of TURBO was limited by free exchange of parts, projects pursued outside expen$ive complete-car shops, spending habits of a generation, itself, growing into gestating families…a culture that, too, began to age and lose the economic footing such machines required. The aluminum motor is hardly friendly to budget minded modifications, by the nature of the material itself.
A new multigenerational scene is needed to keep this style of high performance automotive enthusiasm going strong. As the low rider culture has discovered, fashions can become part of a style…can gain broader meaning..a way of representation which can become timeless to a community.
