This issue of Burnout Magazine hits with a mix of hot-rod energy, surf-culture crossover, and a deeply personal editorial that gives the whole volume a reflective weight. The front half covers the usual heavy hitters—Hot Rod Custom Show, Mooneyes Xmas Party, and the Grand National Roadster Show—all surrounded by chrome, flames, and that Japanese-inflected Americana that Burnout does better than anyone.
A new column, Surf Culture in the Eyes of Kustom Kulture, debuts here, connecting low-slung custom cars with the surfers who live parallel lives of craft, community, and rebellion. There’s 4 Speed, Paint It Black, What Happen’d?, and the usual orbit of delinquent heroes and garage obsessives filling out the culture.
But the emotional anchor is the Editor-in-Chief Nash’s letter. Written shortly after his father’s sudden passing from cardiac infarction, it becomes a meditation on mortality, purpose, and the urgency to create while we’re still here. His father—a healthy, proud, quietly invincible figure—was gone in under a minute, a shock that reshapes the magazine’s motto from “For koolest car people” into something more urgent: Live while you can. Burn whatever fuel you have left. Leave a mark.
The cover art marks the start of a four-issue collaboration with Lowhide, whose first piece centers on a custom Mercury crowned with a red-devil skull and surrounded by icons from Kustom Kulture’s mythology. Three more covers are promised, each expected to push the style even further.
What stays with you is the mix of grit and grace: burnout rubber, saltwater surfers, juvenile delinquents, and a man trying to carve something meaningful into the world before his own engine cuts out.
