Mini Truckin' Magazine Out of Print
I'm going to let you in on a little, not so secret, secret. I am a bit of a renaissance man when it comes to enthusiast activities. You all know me based on hardware reviews and overclocking but before the computer I was a motorcyclist and rode my '92 Kawasaki ZX-7 Ninja year round and only stopped for ice and snow. I had the leather racing suit, carved the canyons, fancy helmet and tested a variety of different tires just to find the compound that fit my riding style. While I may not ride like I used to I still enjoy it recently bought a '04 MV Agusta F4 SPR #239. This bike is basically the GTX 780 Ti Classified Kingpin Edition of the motorcycle world and 1 of 300 ever made.
Before the motorcycles and computers there were, Mini Trucks. In fact I still drive a mini truck and owned four of them over the years. Sure trucks are designed for work but with a little modification you can drive them like a car and really make them look pretty good. The current ride is a '01 Chevy S10 Xtreme Extended Cab, Black and rolling on generic 20" wheels while I find tires for my 19" Bonspeed Atom rims. I had them custom made and took an entire year to have them built correctly. (long story and worth a dedicated article)
The current truck has gone thru a few modifications. From the factory it features a body kit and is dropped 1.5" from stock. I lowered it another 2" in the front and added 3" blocks to the rear to even out the back. The brakes were also extremely bad and I figured since it needed a brake job why not do a modifications in the process. So, I installed a set of 4 wheel disk brakes off of a Z06 Corvette. Yes, that's right big red 6 piston brakes up front and 4 piston brakes in the rear. Total overkill but they look awesome!.
This summer I have a whole list of modifications I plan to complete and will likely find something else to change in the process.
Dedication like this is what keeps an activity alive and while many custom car builders say "Mini Truckin is Dead" there are still people building up custom trucks and still winning car shows with them. There was one magazine dedicated to the mini truck enthusiast and earlier this year I got a notice in the mail saying they were shutting down. My subscription balance would be filled with issues from another magazine which tells me they were broke.
It saddens me to think that circulation was so bad that they couldn't keep the presses running but the market was already niche and as people grow up so do their hobbies. Much to my surprise there hasn't been a vocal backlash from the community either which tells me it was time to go.
I'll see if I can dig up some old issues from the early days, you'll be surprised to see what people came up with. In the mean time here is one other article about the magazine going away from MiniTruckScene.com
#minitrucking 1988 - 2014
