Dean Moon’s legacy lives on at car events all over the world. Those in the know recognize the spun-aluminum disc wheels that land speed racers prized or the pressurized fuel tanks that rode on the noses of so many dragsters. But for most, the enduring symbol of Moon’s contribution to the speed parts industry is a pair of eyes—those googly Mooneyes that stare out from countless T-shirts and decals found from Bakersfield to Yokohama.

How do you get your share of attention at the SEMA Show when foot traffic is shoulder-to-shoulder thick? Some gimmicks these days have gotten pretty outrageous but—as you can see in this photo from the 1971 Show—SEMA showmanship is a decades-long tradition.

The man at the mill is John McWhirter, one of the founders of Racing Head Service (RHS). On the other side of the camera is Hot Rod magazine staffer Bud Lang, who photographed McWhirter cc’ing a Chevy cylinder head for a February 1971 profile of the Memphis-based shop. At the time, Lang wrote, the NHRA’s rules for Junior and Super Stock drag racers were so restrictive that “the few shops or engine builders specializing in high-performance work on such engines have, over the years, turned otherwise standard valve jobs into a science.” Lang then spent the next four pages explaining in thorough detail how RHS prepped small-block Chevy heads, with McWhirter—“the gentleman in charge of head production”—as his guide.

Which George Barris are you most familiar with? The King of the Kustomizers who built the Batmobile, the Munster’s Koach and other outrageous vehicles for movies and TV? Or are you better acquainted with the Barris Brothers, George and Sam, who set custom car trends for decades with Sam’s heavily chopped ’49 Mercury and the later Hirohata Merc? Maybe you know Barris for his own custom creations, such as the Ala Kart roadster pickup, which won the America’s Most Beautiful Roadster award two years running.

In November 1965, jet cars were making all the headlines at the Bonneville salt flats. Craig Breedlove, Art Arfons and brother Walt Arfons continued a battle for the overall land speed record that had started two years earlier when Breedlove became the first to go more than 400 mph in the Spirit of America. Somewhat outside of the media’s glare were two brothers, Southern California hot rodders Bob and Bill Summers, who were aiming to take the 403-mph wheel-driven speed record from Brit Donald Campbell and his million-dollar, turbine-powered Bluebird.

In the summer of 1957, Petersen photographer Bob D’Olivo rode with a convoy of 251 Jeeps as it crossed Northern California’s infamous Rubicon Trail for what was then the fifth Jeeper’s Jamboree. As it still does today, the ’57 Jamboree convened in Georgetown, a small mining town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

In 1981, Hot Rod magazine Executive Editor C.J. Baker wrote an in-depth profile of Junior Johnson’s No. 11 “Mountain Dew” Buick Regal, in which Darrell Waltrip won the NASCAR championship that year. This photo opened that story in the November 1981 issue. Johnson is leaning on the race car; the other man in the photo is Gale Banks, posed with a turbocharged V6 engine he built for the Hot Rod project car behind him.

Bill Stroppe’s involvement with racing runs so deep that it would probably be easier to list the types of racing he didn’t participate in than those he did. On-road, off-road, even in the water, the vehicles that Stroppe and his crew built were fast, competitive and usually groundbreaking in their design and execution.

In December 1962, Petersen Publishing Company photographer Eric Rickman shot Don Hellwig (right) describing a new helper-spring kit to Hot Rod magazine’s LeRoi “Tex” Smith. Those who know Hellwig Products primarily for its truck and camper suspension parts may be surprised by the fact that the kit Hellwig was demonstrating was engineered for a Corvair.

It isn’t often you can capture this many iconic figures in one candid photograph, but that’s exactly what Petersen Publishing photographer Pat Brollier managed to do on a June day in 1974.At left is actor Martin Sheen, next to him is Pete Chapouris, and behind them is Chapouris’ trend-setting ’34 Ford three-window coupe.