4 OCTOBER 20194-WHEEL & OFF-ROAD 4WHEELOFFROAD.COM
I
’M A PRETTY COMPETITIVE GUY BY
nature. I think a lot of that comes
from spending my formative years
as a New Englander. When you’re
cooped up most of the winter
behind a curtain of cold and ice and
then spring taunts you with a few
nice days only to submerge you back under
weeks of gray rain, mud, and wet misery,
you take any opportunity to play outside
with gusto. From playing dodge ball in gym
class as an elementar y school kid to play-
ing football in high school to raging “battle
of the bands” competitions as a young
adult to finally landing at 4-Wheel & Off-
Road magazine as a bright-eyed feature
editor in the late ’90s, the ultimate goal
of any endeavor I undertook became not
only to win , but to victoriously sur vey the
charred remnants of my opponent’s world.
When I was first hired here in maga-
zine land two decades ago, 4-Wheel &
Off-Road (Petersen Publishing) and Four
Wheeler (General Media) were direct
rivals. They were competing brands striv-4XFORWARD
BY Christian Hazel
[email protected]BRAND AID
ing for superiority in the same space on
the newsstand. I’d be out shooting photos
shoulder-to-shoulder with Four Wheeler’s
Ken Brubaker at events, vying against
Ben Stewart at new vehicle launches to
glean that extra bit of insider information,
and trying to out-tech guys like Jimmy
Nyland and Ned Bacon. Sometimes we
were successful and sometimes they were
successful, but it was competition and it
was healthy and it was right up my alley.
Even after Petersen Publishing was sold
to Emap and Emap purchased General
Media, bringing all the Four Wheeler staff
up to share the 10th floor of the Petersen
Publishing Building on Wilshire Boulevard
with us, I could still hear that Ivan Drago “I
will break you” line in my head whenever I
was coming up with stor y themes or cre -
ating content. Smoldering remains. That’s
all I’m gonna leave, man.
But time marches on. I don’t know if it’s
the byproduct of living in sunny California
for 2 1/2 decades where the masses chant
the mantra that everything is “far out and
groovy, man” or whether it’s the fact that
at this stage in my career I’ve ser ved as
editor-in-chief of all of Motor Trend Group’soff-road brands, but now we are like one
big family under the Motor Trend umbrella.
We must be family because for the past
couple months I’ve been eyeball s- deep
helping line up and execute the latest
Week to Wheelin’ video show in Four
Wheeler’s name. If you would have told
me 20 years ago I’d be spending a couple
hours of each workday doing something
for the “opposition,” I’d have called you
crazy. Smoldering remains, remember?
But that’s just what I’ve been doing to
help ensure that the Golden Star replace -
ment early Bronco body and chassis come
together into one bitchin’ badass Bronco
for the Four Wheeler brand.
As I write this I’m sitting in the Motor
Trend Tech center amid a sea of parts des-
tined for installation next week. There’s a
Ford Motorsports 302 crate engine on my
right , an Eaton TrueTrac’d Dana 44 on my
left, a pallet of Wild Horses suspension
directly behind me, and a whole wall of
boxes we still need to open and inventory.
By the time you read this the video will
be live on fourwheer.com and on Motor
Trend’s YouTube channels. I’d better get
going. Tune in to see how we did.