08/29/2026
Legends of Hot Rodding – Rex Burnett, the X-Ray Illustrator of Rodding’s Golden Era.
In the beginning, before hot rodding became a billion-dollar industry spitting out million-dollar rods, it was a primitive world of greasy-fingered WWII vets, lake beds of salt and dust, and shade-tree mechanics making-do.
But when a young Hollywood publicist named Robert E. Petersen launched Hot Rod magazine, he tapped into this cauldron of automotive passion. Uniquely, HRM offered more than photographs of fast cars and tech how-to articles. It also added a novel visual hook that helped pry a few extra dimes out of a rodder’s 30W-stained Levis at the newsstand.
To do so, Hot Rod featured cutaway drawings, that is an under-the-skin look at some of the feature vehicles and prominent racecars. Hot Rod utilized these cutaways from the very first issues. Stroker McGurk cartoonist Tom Medley handled the first few cutaways, before this month’s Legend took over.
fuelcurve.com/legends-of-hot-rodding-rex-burnett-the-x-ray-illustrator-of-roddings-golden-era/
