Founded in 2006 by Paul “Groosh” Grusche.
The magazine was conceived as a online database of stick shift, rear-wheel drive cars that I could reference when looking to buy my next project. It would include links to manufacturers, forums, suppliers, owner’s groups and anything else that supports the marque. You see, I was always searching for cars with manual transmissions but might forget the Mercedes-Benz R129 300SL or the Lexus 300SC came in a stick. Heck, I was even looking at Lincoln when they debuted their first luxury rear-wheel drive LS platform in 2000. Ok, so Lincoln only offered the manual in a six not the V8, like the MB and Lexus, but they were trying to get back into the performance fold and I was excited for them. When I landed on something to buy, I wanted to know how to support it. So references to websites, parts and forums became equally important to catalog.
The magazine covers helped establish the brand and gave me an artistic expression of the hundreds of cars I photographed over the years. The overall concept lead to interviews with Jay Leno, Victor R. Muller, Spyker’s modern founder and chief executive, and Malcolm Bricklin. I even interviewed Tesla’s PR manager when they had only 300 employees. The interviews in turn, opened up opportunities for press passes to Pebble Beach Concours d’ Elegance, Monterey Historic Races and the Detroit Auto Show which lead to more articles and more events.
Unfortunately in the early to mid 2010s, I started running into web development issues. I built the entire magazine on the Joomla platform which required migrations to new platforms and upgrades that I couldn’t keep up with. Ultimately, I lost the entire site and many of the articles I had written but most of the magazine covers I had saved on a hard drive. Years ago I rebuilt what was left on the WordPress platform. More recently, I redid the logo, this time in a SVG format, and basically started over creating the database which is what you see here. I hope you find it useful as you research marques and cars. Please enjoy!