The years of sand and speed

Coop has a wonderful post featuring scans of Veda Orr's Hot Rod Pictorial, a late-'40s yearbook of the dawn of SCTA land speed racing. Orr was a fascinating woman--the first woman dry lakes racer, the first hot rod journalist (she wrote and edited for the SCTA's newsletter before the outbreak of WWII, and even put a couple of issues together during the war as a morale booster for the boys overseas)--and the period between the mid-1930s and late-1940s was a hugely influential one in terms of the look and technology of the traditional hot rod. Well worth a look.