
THE AUTO BUILDER
Featured

Remembering George Poteet
George Poteet, a true icon in the world of hot rodding and land speed racing, has left us, but his legacy blazes on like a nitro-fueled firestorm. Poteet wasn’t just another car guy; he was “The Car Guy,” a legend who lived life a quarter-mile at a time and made history on the salt flats. Let’s dive into the life of a man who put the pedal to the metal and never looked back.

BRIGHT ORANGE
When Mitch Meyers was but a pup back in 1986, he experienced one of the greatest days of his life: He received his first ride, a ’71 Dodge stepside pickup. Now, the truck wasn’t anything like the one shown here, but it wasn’t a bad canvas for a cool high school cruiser, and the $700 purchase price was just right.

CUSTOM STOPPING POWER
If you own a Ford or Chevy, most of the parts you will need to build a street rod are readily available, and from a variety of suppliers. We have written numerous stories about kits for these cars in our family of rodding magazines, and some of them were a direct replacement for the original. By and large, they worked perfectly and bolted right in, as designed. These types of kits are convenient for many street rod builders, as well as street rod shops, and they are part of what has helped grow our hobby into such a broad special-interest group. But in addition to the “normal” and most popular rods, there were many other great cars made in the pre-war era, and some of them can be a real challenge to street rodders because there are no pre-manufactured parts, and no kits that make them easy to build. Sounds like the old days, right? Well, that’s the modern world for you–even our hobbies have become targets of convenience.
Spotlighter
POPULAR READS
-
Product Spotlight: Bill Mitchell Products Aluminum LS Engine Block
-
PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT: 60-66 Chevy C10 Fresh Air Vent Block Off Plate
-
Product Spotlight: Pyramid Optimized Design Sequential Aurora Taillight for 1964½–1966 Mustang
-
PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT: Cam Covers for GEN/3 Coyote from Pyramid Optimized Design
THE RIGHT WAY
A Young Installer Does a Painstaking Install to Show Us How to Upgrade With a SS Speed Grille
Author
Marshall Spiegel
Story & Photography
The white ’04 Tundra, a well-converted, slightly lifted street truck, showed up in the driveway of installer Eric Leopold, owner of Diamond Star Racing in Atascadero, California. The customer had purchased a Street Scene (SS) Speed Grille and brought it to Eric to be installed.
Eric read the SS “screws-and-clips” installation instructions, and the job appeared to him to be the proverbial piece of cake. Then he got to the part that says, “If your grille has a chrome inlay on it, we highly recommend masking off and painting it black.” It didn’t say anything about white trucks with white stock grille appointments.
There’s a right way and a wrong way to perform any installation, and installer Leopold demonstrated how to do it the “rightest” way possible. The accompanying photos show the highlights of his approach.
ARTICLE SOURCES
Street Scene Equipment
365 McCormick Ave.
Costa Mesa, CA 90262
714/426-0590
Diamond Star Racing
5005 Traffic Way
Units A & B
Atascadero, CA 93422
805/275-2360








