How do I hold back my enthusiasm for this month's issue? Who would have thought that there was so much going on outside our country's borders that involved our favorite sport? I figured this would be a good month to talk about how far our sport has come, where it has gone, and who's taken notice. The mini-truckin' scene is a slowly evolving, growing disease that has infected people all over the world.
The mini-truck scene in the U.S. got our first hint of overseas coverage with some of the U.K. features shown a few years ago, as well as our first mini-truck of the year being a U.K. truck. The Mazda from Rayvern Hydraulics featured some of the cleanest and most original work we had seen. After a couple years' hiatus, we bring you the most complete and hardcore overseas truck coverage ever compiled. We're sure that all of you will appreciate the difference of style (and the similarities), and just the ability to see something new and different.
Also, in the last year some big players have noticed our scene. Television stations such as MTV, ESPN, and the Discovery Channel have all jumped on the bandwagon. ESPN2 featured a show called Truck Stop that revolved around the Western mini-truck scene, including Domination the Video, Drop Zone in Oregon, IF Custom, and Auto Core. Monster Garage did a mini-truck build on a 720, which may or may not have aired by the time this issue comes out.
In the Edelbrock booth at SEMA '05 the cover S-10 from our June '05 issue was on display, which you wouldn't have seen three years ago. The automotive world has not always taken the mini-truckin' world seriously. Slowly but surely they're beginning to understand how hardcore we are. A lot of street rodders have come to notice the attention to detail that we're starting to appreciate, as well as some of the creative endeavors we have come to endear. As the originators of using airbags as the primary suspension to make your ride lay flat, mini-truckers have added a lot of new styling cues to the hot-rod and street-rod markets. Whether they like it or not, we have influenced them.
It makes me happy to see that what we are doing as a whole is not going unnoticed. To have a TV show include something as niche as mini-trucks is a gamble in itself. The fact that someone felt that spending the money and time on us was worthwhile is killer. On a tangent, I hope that we don't get misunderstood and get a new crop of mini-truckers that aren't on the same page as the rest of us. Although, in order for our scene to get bigger, we have to be open-minded as well as have open arms for people with interest in the mini-truck world.
There will be plenty more groundbreaking minis to be built, as well as a lot more trends that were mini-trucker engineered to take the custom scene to new heights. We mini-truckers keep pushing ourselves that much harder to be different and that much cleaner than the rest of the custom world. To shun us is to be ignorant to an anchor in the custom community. Keep pushing! One of you just might invent the next air bag.