"To mount a scoop you'll need a power drill, jigsaw, tape, string, scuff pads, a paint marker, a rivet gun, and the spray paint of your choice."

That caption is one of the coolest, funniest things I've ever read. It harkens back to many a grade school science experiment. It's great to see more of Magnante in Car Craft. I missed him in Hot Rod after the redesign there. He's a perfect fit for the new *** and hopefully he'll be filling more pages in the future.

Magnante is great his articles are funny informative and highly entertaining. More of Steve M .  

I totally agree, Magnante is pretty awesome.  Maybe he can tell us about junkyard turbos since no one else at Carcraft is interested.  Anyway the grout pen thing was goofy since a sharpie will dry in like 3.5 seconds and does the same job.  I don't know his writing style very well yet since I don't read Hot Rod, but his junkyard crawl section  was always cool.  

I read Junkyard Crawl first. Always entertaining.  

Yeah, Magnante is cool but so is Freiburger and his "all cars have potintial as a street machine attitude"
A few years ago there was a cool article (I forget the magazine but this was a super issue!) where they bought a 1967 Dodge Dart, picked up a big old 'lead-sled' with a 440 and dropped it into the Dart.. real low buck, hose clamps for the tranny, etc (you know stuff we really do but won't admit to!)
If I remember they went deep into the 12's for pocket change and finally lunched the tranny. those kind of articles I love and I'm not even a Mopar guy!  

Magneto does rule.  

Freiburgers "Cheap Thrills" article is still the best thing to ever grace the pages of any of these mags. I am a Ford guy and it rocked. Magnante is still great though and if anyone besides Dave F is going to come close to that it is Magnante. Although Taylor Vlahos articles about her Satellite kicked ass too. Can you tell I have a crush on her ?  

Both kick so much ass I think the mag would be lost without either one. Freiburger builds fast beater small blocks and Magnante drives a altered-wheel base car on the street, take your pick.

I remember a similar article from Magnante in Hotrod, sometime around 1999/2000 where he dropped a 500 Caddy into a Chevette. The idea was to use GM's largest production motor with their smallest RWD car. I think it ran somewhere in the 11s on no budget.

And I agree Freiburger rules too. His run as editor in chief of Rod and Custom was classic. 

i love the junkyard, i also love the junkyard crawl articles. this is the approach that got me stuck on Car Craft to begin with. in fact, it was the "Smoky Burnout Issue" under Freiburgers reign that did it for me. i think they have been on the right path again recently.

so lets not be ashamed of rust, a smoking engine ... and not having nearly enough real estate for the cars we own.

Magnante is just a free-lancer these days.

He's printing more articles in Hemming's Classic Car than in any Primedia books nowadays.  (His latest on the all-aluminum Slant 6 and the turbo Slant 6 prototype that escaped Mother Mopar's dumpster is a awesome yarn).

He was also great on the Barrett-Jackson telecast and has done some more TV work on a D-I-Y network auto restoration show.

There is definitely something about the Magman.  It's hard to say why he is fun to watch/read.  He is very unassuming and much more real than any reality personality.  I guess it's because us real folk can relate to him and what he does.  Hope we will see more of him!  Have a good one you all!