December 2002: Gravelrama is the only event that rates its own section in this story, and for good reason. It's been around longer than the magazine (the first one was held in 1971); and its unique combination of flat drags, obstacle course races, and the massive Big Eliminator hillclimb has kept us (and thousands of fans) coming back to Cleves, Ohio, for decades. Many of our staffers consider this their favorite event. Even Editor Pw made his mark at Gravelrama, earning himself a place in the Over the Hill Gang by successfully making it to the top of Big Elim in a borrowed Wrangler, powered by a Mopar slant-six.
September 1986: Because we featured monster trucks in the Aug. and Sept. '07 retrospectives, we'll keep their mention here brief. They deserve a place in this installment, since monster truck competition has been-and continues to be-a mainstay of 4x4 entertainment. Usually our monster race coverage was from the various Jamborees and Fun/Truck Fests, but sometimes we attended-and even put on-special monster-only competitions. One of those was a monster truck hillclimb on Gravelrama's Big Eliminator hill.
September 1993: We rarely covered racing outside of the U.S., primarily because we felt our readers would be more interested in events they could actually participate in and relate to. Occasionally, though, we'd dust off our passports and travel to exotic lands to capture competitions like the Camel Trophy and Warn's Transylvania Trophy. In 1993, staffer Bourdon was in the Malaysian jungles when Americans Tim Hensley and Michael Hussey won the Camel Trophy.
July 1978: In theory, it's the most elemental of truck competitions: Hitch something heavy to your rig and see how far you can pull it. But over the years, the truck and tractor pull has, like all motorsports, evolved into contests with very specialized machinery pulling high-tech, weight-transfer sleds. Back in 1978, when we compared East Coast and West Coast pulling styles ("Latest Rage!" screamed the cover), the trucks were more like what we drove every day.
January 1991: Though it was a fairly regular part of the magazine early on, our pulling coverage got pretty spotty until the late '80s/early '90s, when staffer Brent Ross made regular treks to the pulling championships in Bowling Green, Ohio.