KB: You mean, in order to simplify, you got the job because you drove a Honda Civic (laughs).
SS: What sort of background do you come from?
EE: I'm just a street racer from So Cal. Some friends of mine (who are still involved with this industry) and I used to race for a crew called Speedline.
KB: Much like Ed, I raced a 400hp '69 Plymouth GTX before I even had my license. I raced all the time throughout my high school years.
MP: I haven't done much of anything on wheels.
SS: Super Street was originally going to be called Street Power. What happened and who came up with the name Super Street?
MP: Yes, it was originally slated to be called Street Power but the name was essentially "stolen" by McMullen Argus (now owned by Primedia), who used the name to create an SIP. Apparently one of our ad sales people leaked the name and they snatched it up right away. [Argus] wound up killing the book after two or three issues, but we had to stick with Super Street.
KB: Well, back in those days, it would be uncommon to find any Petersen title without the word "super" in it. "Super" this! "Super" that!
SS: And at one point, wasn't the magazine going to be killed off?
MP: About the third issue in, they cut our budget down to a bi-monthly budget even though we still had to produce a monthly magazine. It was tough because SCC and Turbo were on top of the game but at the same time we fit this niche that still holds true today for you guys. Nobody else featured real, everyday cars. You'd be hard pressed to find the cars we featured in Turbo, unless it was a Grand Am.
SS: Matt, would you say it was your idea to shape the magazine's editorial direction by injecting humor into it? Plastering your faces all over the place, the snide comments-that sort of thing?
MP: Why yes, I take full responsibility (laughs)!
KB: It wasn't his idea; that's his personality.
MP: There was a conscious effort to place personalities into the magazine because we wanted the magazine to reflect our own selves at the time.
SS: Where did the biohazard symbol come from?
MP: From the equivalent of a clip-art book. We were looking for a symbol to use as a end-bug so you knew the story was over. We looked at the skull-and-crossbones and a bunch of different ones until we saw the nuclear symbol-we knew that was it, perfect for the end. It looked like the end, the bomb.
EE: Remember back in the day, we used to say "That's the bomb"?
MP: It just worked because it was a cool looking symbol so when we made stickers of it, people wanted to put it onto their car. They wouldn't put Super Street because they didn't know what it was at the time, but they'd put the nuclear symbol on. After a while it just seemed to catch on because we saw it everywhere.
By Terence Patrick
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