Pat Ganahl’s Rod & Custom is archived to make freely available Pat Ganahl’s posts from 2018 to 2022.
Admin note:
Hello all,
I’m Pat’s daughter-in-law, Sabina, and also the admin for his website. Billy and I encouraged him around 2017 when he was setting to “retire” to share whatever comes to mind freely and openly with his readers on a blog (he hated this word) or website. We knew he had many more stories to tell, memories to share, and knowledge to impart. He was hesitant at first, given the annoyances of modern technology – but I reassured him that he just needs to send me the words and photos, and I’ll do the rest to make it happen. What Billy and I also knew was that his readers from multiple publications would be eager for more columns – free! – and that his voice was preeminent in hot rod and custom car culture and history.
Over four years, I had the great honor and joy of “working” with Pat to deliver his columns to you, dear reader. He really picked up the pace during COVID, figuring that people needed something to read while stuck indoors, and began creating a post every other week. He never ran out of ideas for posts, in fact, a post would garner some emails from readers and he’d write a follow-up and bump it to the top of the list of the many column ideas he had. He especially loved that he was free of editors and marketing – allowing him to share his thoughts and ideas unfiltered and creating an open space where he could delve into some really fun, and sometimes forgotten, corners of hot-rodding.
He didn’t want comments on each post, because Pat wanted the words shared to be his, and not turn into a chat board. However, he always read his emails from this site, and responded to most of them. Anna, Billy, and I were so happy for him when he started getting people coming up to him at GNRS or other shows to tell him that they loved reading his website posts – or that they look forward to getting that email telling them he had a new article up. One thing about Pat, you could approach him just to say hi or thank you or “are you Pat Ganahl?” and he was very generous with his time. And he appreciated every single person who came up to him or emailed or messaged him that they enjoyed his work.
Personally, I have been extremely lucky in my life to have had two amazing fathers – both of whom passed too soon – who were funny, adventurous, kind, charming, and brilliant. I treasure the time Pat and I spent together preparing his over 100 columns for this site – phone calls that were a gateway to a wonderful relationship between us, and our own personal project that we got to do together. I learned so very much from him, and can still hear his voice lighting up with my name when we spoke.
Lastly, I just want to say that we, Pat’s family, are proud and happy to keep Pat’s writings available here as an archive. If you haven’t yet, check out the Instagram link at the top which also housed many of his photos from his personal collection, and is now being run by Billy with photos from Pat’s history.