Swedens first Hotrod magazine founded by Bo Sandberg in 1970. Bo, who was more famous under hes nickname "Gamen", was a doer with big ideas.
In their upper teenage, two brothers, Bo and Sven Sandberg lived in Örby south of Stockholm city. The only villa with 3 garages Ive seen in Sweden. Outside you could see hot rods, half build customs and classic american cars they where building together with their friends. And kids from the hood was watching. Me included, my friend lived two houses away.
A couple of years later they arranged Hot Rod Shows in the middle of Stockholm. Huge success every time.
The magazine covered all american cars, motorcycles, english and american choppers, hotrods and dragracing. okEditorial office was located in Gamens shop Yankee Custom Parts premises in Älvsjö.
About 10 years later they was situated in Bollmora/Trollbäcken industrial area in a big new building. Bosse Bson Bertilsson, with many years at the magazine, asked me to help when some employees soon would quit. Sture Thorngren had already left and started Wheels magazine.
I was working with Thomas Ålander, learning the workflow to produce the magazine. In the huge garage was all Gamens and Svennes hotrods and customs parked. We sat upstairs with Svenne and his wife Maud Sandberg who also had their office there.
Thomas left the building after a while for the Maldives with Martin Hopp to start a windsurfing business.
One day Bosse Bson got an offer to take over the business. Gamen was abroad and busy. Bson accepted and we moved a bit further away to a new office.
It was Bson, his wife, I and a couple of older girls. Bson in one room, me in the production room. The office girls had a bigger room in the back
This was before the computer era. Everything was traditionally hand made. We recieved a lot of pictures and texts from our freelance photographers and writers. And privat persons. From all over the world. The rest we had to fix ourselves with our cameras and audio recorders. Bson had some ongoing projects.
We visited garages, car painters, shops, meetings, dragracing, biker clubs all over to fill up with cool material for next months magazines articles. In summer time all weekends was booked. Many hours of waiting on racetracks between actually action happening. Bson and friends had their own dragracing team. So they had a fixed schedule. I had van and biker meetings on mine.
Photos was primary black/white copies. Colour slides was for spreads in full colour, for hot cars and bikes. They were just a few pages in the beginning and we added more colour spreads as the time went by.
We used a projector to visualize the slide "with a car" on the spread dummy at the wall. We draw the contour of the cars we wanted to be without background with a pen. We put an unique ID on the slide and drawing together with the percent it would be enlarged to.
For B/W photos we draw a rectangular and size.
One spread could have 1 or 20+ photos, all depended on the text.
We recieved texts in all forms and languages. Some was just a short list with options. So we had to translate, copywrite and convert all text with a typewriter on special manus papers to find out how many letters it became in total. From that we could find out column width and length so it filled the page or spread.
Bson primary worked with his baby, the dragracing pages! Material and latest news from usa and sweden. He also marked all space for ads. I was doing the expert section making small drawings and answered questions from readers. And the permanent info stuff . The rest we finished together.
I wasn't an expert but our library was! So I slowly learned a bit.
How many engine options had a caddy 59?
Who is Don Garlits?
What paint code has Corvette 70 orange?
How long is Tolles forks?
After we finished all pages they went to Finland by the ferry to our magazine repro and printing business contact.
After that it was out of our hands, unless we would spend extra money. They followed our directions, doing their best, and delivered a dummy Bson had to check before he said ok to print.
It was never 100% ok, but thats was the way back then. And the price was fixed, all changes would take time and cost extra. After print they arrived with the ferry, and ended up in newspaper stores in sweden and abroad on prescription.
Payments from all shops arrived earliest 6 month later. Printing costs was rising. The competition from new magazines in the same segments became harder each months. Huge publishing companies with unlimited budgets took more and more space.
Finally Bson had to give up the business and close the office.
The Colorod magazine was published in the years 1970-1983. R.I.P.
Bson moved to USA and Californias sun, I went back to advertising.
(Today I could make a smilar magazine in a long day, if all text and pictures are ready to use. And send it online direct to a printing mashine. Thats my friends is progress! )
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