The Tallest and Shortest-Serving HOT ROD Editor: Pat Ganahl
Thom TaylorWriterHot Rod ArchivesPhotographer
In our occasional look back at HOT ROD editors, we bring you the editor with the distinction of holding that position for the least amount of time: nine months. "Too Tall" Pat Ganahl is the first to admit he knew his days were probably numbered when he took the position. It wasn't from a lack of talent or experience, but maybe a lack of tolerance for office politics. Internal politics can get nasty, and unfortunately, Pat held reign during a time when HOT ROD overlords outnumbered the editorial side.
His nemesis was John Dianna, who on his first day as HOT ROD publisher announced he would make the staff work 110 percent. Pat immediately replied, "Gee, that sounds good to me, I'd like to slow down about 40 percent."
Pat had a master's degree in English literature after first pursuing mechanical engineering, so he was more than qualified when first venturing into the publishing fringes leading to editorship of Street Rodder magazine, barely a year old at the time. He had been offered a job at HOT ROD by then-editor Terry Cook, but needed to stay in Orange County so wife Anna could finish her doctorate at the University of California, Irvine. Commuting to HOT ROD's Sunset Strip digs was deemed too far.
Pat stayed with Street Rodder for five years. Says Pat, "I didn't want to be a hot rod writer, I wanted to be a real writer, so I ended up getting a job at Sunset magazine as an outdoor travel editor." He also did freelance stories for the likes of Guitar Player and Sports Illustrated, among others. "By then, I had already done a couple of technical books for SA Design—one on nitrous oxide and the second on Ford engines—and they sold well."
A chance encounter with HOT ROD Editor Lenny Emanuelson on the starting line at the 1983 Winternationals at Pomona became prescient. Lenny asked Pat why he was working for a "housewives" magazine when he was the best hot rod writer he knew? Pat responded, "Well, if that's how you feel, I want to work for HOT ROD, and I want your job." Lenny said, "OK."
Things were changing at Petersen Publishing, HOT ROD's mothership. Longtime VP Dick Day was retiring, and there was a plan for HOT ROD Publisher Harry Hibler to replace Day, with Lenny jumping from the editor's chair to publisher. Now their plan was complete, with Pat set to become HOT ROD's next editor. He started in May 1983 as a staff editor, waiting for the changing of the guard.
As a staffer, Pat had fun doing a supercharger shootout, teaming with Gray Baskerville to cover the fledgling nostalgia drag racing efforts taking place in northern California, and generally doing all of the cool stuff you've come to love from HOT ROD. "I did a story called 'Re-evolution,' which was preserving, restoring and re-running vintage dragsters," Pat says. "Garlits was putting his museum together and Art Chrisman had restored his Hustler dragster. The idea was to find an old dragster, restore it, and take it out and run it down the track. It was something the reader could do that was affordable and fun."
Another assignment was HOT ROD's "Flashback '57," a 1957 Chevy to be given away at the HOT ROD Supernationals to some lucky participant. "I did the Flashback '57, and all of the corporate attorneys got involved, plus Dianna liked to make rules," Pat says. "He told us we couldn't do any mechanical modifications if we were giving it away. Here we are HOT ROD magazine and we can't give away a modified hot rod. Everything on the car had to be stock mechanically, but I could do body mods, so we did it as an early 1960s mild custom/street rod. It had a dual-quad, 270hp, 283ci, T10 four-speed, posi rear end, and it even had stock repro seat covers."
Then, before the planned musical-chair plan could commence, "John Dianna came waltzing through the door," Pat says. Dianna was a polarizing figure at Petersen, with some loving him—others, not so much. "It didn't take long before Leonard threw up his hands and said, 'I'm out of here, I can't work for this guy. '" Pat was next in line.
"There were so many stock cars on the covers of the nine issues I did, and it was Dianna choosing them. I was editor, but he was picking the covers," Pat says. "The things I got into the magazine were the things I got in edgewise."
Oct. 1986 was Pat's first issue after Lenny vacated. Says Pat, "I had a staff of five people besides me that included Gray Baskerville, John Baechtel, Marlan Davis, and then two guys we called 'the kids': Todd Howard and Scott Dahlquist. What was really fun was that I was never a manager of people before, so you can imagine what it was like managing such a diverse group, especially Gray and Marlan. Having staff meetings, corralling their ideas and then putting it in a magazine every month was fun.
"The first cover that was my own was 'Low-Buck Specials.' I put three homebuilt cars on the cover. I got called into John's office and was dressed down because there was an old guy at the gas pump and I didn't have some sexy woman instead." That same issue is well remembered for Pat's "Caddy Hack" article. "The whole idea was Newton's laws of physics. Without spending a dime on the car other than cutoff blades, by taking weight out, it will go faster and faster with the same amount of horsepower." Variations on this theme have been tried numerous times in HOT ROD since.
And, of course, the infamous swimsuit issue followed. "The point was that every April we did some kind of spoof or April Fools' thing; in fact, we made fun of John Dianna the year before," Pat says. At the time, no swimsuit issue existed besides Sports Illustrated, so this was fertile ground to try something a little different and hopefully increase newsstand sales, too. "I went back to the earliest issues of HOT ROD when they had 'Parts With Appeal' with the girls holding parts in swimsuits next to a car," Pat says. "Back then a lot of photographers got women in bathing suits to pose next to cars they shot. Why were these girls in bathing suits next to cars—they weren't at the beach? So that was the irony and spoof. Dianna OK'd it and we got cover comps made."
Every six months, editors had two-year planning meetings with Petersen President Fred Waingrow. Says Pat, "We'd have to go to Waingrow's office with Dianna sitting to Waingrow's left and circulation guy Nigel Heaton at his right. There were a bunch of suits telling us what we needed to do to our magazine to make it sell better on the newsstand. Waingrow would go through an issue and yea or nay what he saw. As editor, I had these boards made up as color comps—drawings of upcoming covers so they could be approved. One was a girl in a polka-dot bikini standing by the car with the blurb 'First and Last Swimsuit Issue?' In these meetings, if Waingrow thumbed through the pages and turned a page back everyone would freeze and go, 'Oh my God!' So I show this cover comp and start to explain it and Waingrow goes, 'What?' with this flabbergasted response. Dianna literally jumped up on his chair—he stood on top of his chair and said, 'Mr Waingrow, this is the first I've heard of this—I don't know anything about this.' So Dianna disavows the whole thing. I explained that it was going to be in fun and it was spoofing the old Parts With Appeal, that they would be professional photos with each girl dressed in bathing suits like you'd see at the beach in California, not salacious. We would credit the hair stylist, whose bathing suit she was wearing, things like that."
Without getting too far into the swamp, Waingrow did approve it and the very rocky road leading to Pat's swimsuit issue wound its way to completion. If you thought this was the reason Pat was fired from his editorship and sent back to staff editor purgatory, you'd be wrong. That happened a few days after the swimsuit issue was complete. Dianna wanted to replace Pat's managing editor with someone else, which Pat felt was arbitrary and without warrant. This was in the days before human resources, so there was no advocate to take up personnel issues. Pat pushed back, telling Dianna if he didn't like what he was doing, to find another editor. The next day, Pat was no longer editor of HOT ROD.
Says Pat, "The big thing was the swimsuit issue hadn't come out yet, and of course, when it did it was a huge success. It takes a few months to get the sales figures once it's off sale, so it wasn't until months later they found the swimsuit issue sold 100,000 more copies on the newsstand. That was almost $300,000 in Mr. Petersen's pocket—it was total profit. And guess who took all of the credit for it? John Dianna."
Pat stayed with HOT ROD until mid-1988 when he was chosen by former HOT ROD Editor Lee Kelley to bring back magazine. "The whole thing was totally bootstrapped, and we brought it back successfully," Pat says. "At six months, we were within 5 percent of Street Rodder's circulation. I did for the next five years, although doing it by myself almost killed me." From there he continued writing occasionally for HOT ROD, , as well as a new magazine called Rodder's Journal. More books followed—20 in all—but it has only been in the last few months that Pat has done something he never thought he could do. "I'm retired," he says. "I've done a lot of good stuff, I'm proud of what I did, and I think it was pretty well done, creative, and spoke to the audience, so I'm done."
Throughout his career, Pat has built a succession of cars, including restoring his historic Iacono dragster, building a two-time March Meet Top Fuelwinning dragster with his hero Gene Adams and Don Enriquez, and a myriad of street cars that include a 1932 Chevy coupe, 1932 Ford roadster, 1952 and 1953 Chevys, his 1956 Ford F-100 pickup he uses to haul his race cars, and more. "Building cars was my hobby and writing about them was my work," Pat says. "I've always been building a hot rod. Part of my success is I was building while I was writing about it. My only regret is that I didn't have time to work on my own cars more. Now I look at retirement as not only can I get the house finished but I can get some car projects done."
His current project is what he calls his "Road Rod." Says Pat, "I've never had a hot rod for more than to drive around town, even though I've driven my roadster to Pleasanton several times with the 1940 trans and 1934 rear end. My 1948 Chevy had the original 4:11 gears in it, with a 235ci straight-six with every piece of speed equipment you could put on it and a stock 1948 Chevy transmission. I put 14 transmissions, six engines, and four rear ends in that car during the time I had it. I used to drive around with a spare transmission, regulator, and generator in the trunk, and I've changed axles by the side of the road—I went through all of this with that car."
So now he's building a cruiser from a very nice 1933 Ford Fordor sedan, something with enough accouterments so both he and Anna can drive it anytime, anywhere. "I don't care how fast it is, I want air conditioning, an electric fan, Vega steering, disc brakes, single AFB, 9-inch rear end, adjustable coilovers. It will be practical, comfortable, with Toyota Camry seats with lumbar support, and we'll leave the hood shut so you don't see the air-conditioning hoses and all of that," he says.
Why does he do all this? "Not only do I love HOT ROD magazine, but also I love hot rodding as an American culture. If you're a hot rodder, you're a do-it-yourselfer, you're creative, you're inventive, and hopefully somewhat artistic. The idea about building a hot rod is to take something not worth a whole lot, take what you can afford, and make it better. As Petersen first said, 'To modify it for improved looks or performance.' I'll go further by saying a real hot rodder can do anything. It gives you the confidence to modify anything and make it personal and better. Plus, there're all of the stories and characters. I was able to do the book on Von Dutch and then the book on Ed Roth, and these were real characters."
Life and retirement is good for Pat Ganahl, and we're sure you'll get a chance to see him somewhere down the road in his black and bitchin' 1933 Fordor with his wife Anna, a backseat full of luggage, and a cool story to tell.