Steve Magnante

Steve Magnante is a life-long car enthusiast who was born in the summer of 1964. He admits that he was born too late to have witnessed the Supercar Sixties first hand. A chance encounter with a stack of "vintage" car magazines in 1974 influenced Steve forever. In those faded issues of Motor Trend, Super Stock & Drag Illustrated, Hot Rod, Popular Hot Rodding, Car Craft, Drag Strip and Hi-Performance Cars, he was transported into another world, far, far away from the OPEC era of the mid-Seventies.

By 1982, the re-birth of Detroit V8 performance marketing was getting started with the Mustang GT 5.0. Though it only had 157-horsepower,soon the rest of Detroit responded with the IROC-Z, Buick GN, Dodge Daytona Turbo-Z and others. By the Nineties, Detroit was getting even more serious and horsepower ratings of 250-plus only hinted at what was to come - thanks to computer controls, EFI and other advances that cut fuel consumption and emissions without harming acceleration.

A devoted student of the Detroit performance scene and the history of hot rodding, Steve got his "big break" in 1997 when hired by Hot Rod Magazine as Technical Editor. Steve worked on-staff in the Petersen Building on Wilshire Blvd. in Los Angeles from Tuesday, August 19, 1997 until Tuesday, January 20, 2004. He contributed to a total of 77 issues of Hot Rod (December 1997 through April 2004) and was a driving force in helping to re-emphasize the roots of hot rodding, nostalgia drag racing and focusing on inexpensive junkyard-sourced hot rod projects.

After leaving Hot Rod Magazine, Steve continued to contribute technical, historical and personality profile articles to Hot Rod, Car Craft, Mopar Muscle, High Performance Pontiac, Chevy High Performance, Elapsed Times and Hot Rod Deluxe magazines.

He also authored three books for CarTech Books starting in 2010, the first being "How To Build Altered Wheelbase Cars", followed by "Rusted Muscle: A Collection of Derelict Dream Machines" and finally "Steve Magnante's 1001 Muscle Car Facts".

Steve is also part of the live on-stage TV crew during the Barrett-Jackson Collector Car Auction events on Fox Sports (formerly Speed TV) since 2005. In addition, Steve is a spokesperson for Dodge and the Dodge Scat Pack, helping to spread news of the latest hemi powered machines available from Dodge. Though Steve's "core" is Chrysler related, he is also a fan of vintage and late model Ford, GM vehicles as well as the many special vehicles produced by AMC, Studebaker, Packard and the rest of America's many auto makers.

Steve lives in North Brookfield, Massachusetts where he works on his fleet of three altered wheelbase cars when he isn't traveling on the road for Barrett-Jackson or Dodge.