In our April issue we kicked off a series of articles celebrating the 30-year history of Petersen's 4-Wheel & Off-Road magazine. We'll be covering all sorts of topics during the course of this retrospective, but we figured the best place to start was by interviewing the magazine's editors. In this third installment, we bring the editor's story up to the present by talking to the men who undertook a major change in the magazine's direction.
David Freiburger
May 1994-January 1998
"I'm most proud of the fact that we shifted the emphasis of the magazine from show trucks to real-world trucks that really performed. We probably put total beaters on the cover a bit too often, but at the time it really worked. Also, I'll go ahead and pat myself on the back for identifying the tube-chassis-buggy trend and amplifying its benefits, which I think led to its growth. Probably the seminal moment for those rigs was when we put Soni's Scorpion on the cover [Aug. '97] and asked if it was the world's most capable 4x4.
"We also saw trail riding booming and getting more and more serious. Years earlier, Moses Ludel at Off Road magazine had tried and failed to launch a 4x4 Trials competition. I thought of that when I kept getting calls from the promoters of the 4x4 Triathlon events. I was convinced the readers did not care about swimming, rowing, or shooting, so instead I wrote an outline of a trail competition that I would agree to cover if the promoter, Bob Hazel, credited us with it. I left the magazine soon thereafter and the next editor was not interested in the competition, but the promoter did it anyway. And competitive rockcrawling was born.
"Which is all ironic, as today I feel that tube buggies and rock racing have gotten out of control. It's time to just go trail riding again.
"The best project truck we had was the first Jeep TJ, the green one we called Elvis after a CD of the King's greatest hits got stuck in the player. We built a neat little rig with 33s, 4.10s, lockers, and a 4:1 transfer case. When the Wrangler won the 4x4 of the Year competition that year, I gave a speech to the Jeep people about the mods we'd made. I was thronged by engineers who later asked us to deliver the TJ back to the Chelsea proving grounds. Last time we saw it there, they were calling it Elvis and the CD was still stuck. While Jp magazine recently reported that our claim is untrue, Pw and I know that Elvis was the inspiration for the Wrangler Rubicon.
"When I started at the magazine, Tech Editor Tom Bezzi was quite sick from complications of AIDS. Near the end, I asked him to write his own farewell column where my editorial normally appeared. While I had some concern about the backlash from the readership, I was shocked at how much positive mail we got from Tom's revelations about his illness."
Freiburger is the only former editor who's still employed at the company. He's editor-in-chief of Hot Rod magazine and Editorial Director of Car Craft, Popular Hot Rodding, Chevy High Performance, 5.0 Mustang, Musclecar Review, and Engine Masters.
Cole Quinnell
February 1998-November 2000
"During my time as editor, the Jeep Wrangler had just returned to round headlamps, gasoline was about $1.30 a gallon, Chrysler and Daimler merged, Ford bought Land Rover, and solid-axle Chevy trucks and Jeeps still ruled the enthusiast marketplace. Tire sizes on modified 4x4s went from 33s as the norm to 35s and 37s, and much, much more aggressive tread patterns became available. The walls of fabrication indifference and intimidation came down, leading to a lot more innovative, home-grown modifications, including custom-fabricated mutlilink suspension systems.
"In that vein, my favorite project truck was Project 4xQuad. It marked a departure in project vehicles. We went from asking 'What's available for this truck?' to 'What should this type of truck be like?' There were no kits for stuffing a Mopar Hemi into a brand-new Dakota, or a lift kit to install 39s. It took a lot of custom fabrication work by Off-Road Unlimited to take what we sketched and make it functional. All of the project vehicles we built after this one followed the same format-dream big and create a vision of what the vehicle should be, rather than drive it through Pep Boys to see what fit.
"Ultimate Adventure is what I'm proudest of. This event is the best combination of hard-core trails with pavement in between that either keeps the vehicles sane or proves their owners insane. It forced us to rethink how we built our 4x4s-they had to perform extremely well off-road, but be durable enough to drive for eight hours a day on the highway.
"My favorite Ultimate Adventure took us from Cedar City, Utah, to Canon City, Colorado. We descended down a 900-foot cliff on switchbacks in the middle of the desert north of Lake Powell, crossed the Continual Divide on dirt at Old Monarch Pass (11,312 feet), and drove across the world's highest suspension bridge (1,053 feet). There's just no better way to take this in than in a vehicle with no top and no doors."
After two years as Editor, Quinnell was promoted to Editorial Director. He later left the company and went to work for DaimlerChrysler doing public relations for Chrysler, Dodge, and Jeep vehicles.
Rick Pw
December 2000-present
Editor Pw had the least to say about his stint at the magazine, despite the fact that he's been editor longer than any of the rest of us. Maybe it was because we didn't have enough Coronas around to loosen his tongue. More likely it was because he's still in the Editor's chair keeping his staff busy (or at least trying to keep his staff at all; there's been a bit of turnover), buying and building Jeeps and coping with freelancers who can't meet their deadlines.
Your most memorable experience as editor? "Running the Ultimate Adventure series, any year. Even prerunning with Trent McGee."
Favorite story or project truck? "Any Dirt Every Day story. The best project was my M38A1 used on the Ultimate Adventure. My favorite event was driving in Gravelrama over the Big Elim."
What are you proudest of? "Getting people to get out and wheel instead of polishing their chrome."